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THE    DROESHOUT    ORIGINAL    PORTRAIT    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

(Original  of  the  famous  Droeshout  print  prefixed  to  the  First  Folio  [1623]  of  Shakespeare's 

plays) 


THE 

AGE  OF  SHAKESPEARE 


BY 
ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

NEW   YORK  AND   LONDON 

M  C  M  V 1 1 1 


Books  by 
ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 


Poetical  Works.     8vo.     6  Volumes 
Tragedies.     8vo.     s  Volumes  . 

Lyrical  Poems.     8vo 

Love's  Cross  Currents.     Post  8vo 
The  Duke  of  Gandia.     8vo     .     . 
The  Age  of  Shakespeare.     8vo  . 


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Copyright,  1908,  by  Harper  &  Brothers. 

All  riffhts  reserved* 
Published  September,  igo8. 


fJ!^RARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

SAMA  BARBARA 


TO 
THE  MEMORY  OF 

CHARLES    LAMB 


When  stark  oblivion  froze  above  their  names 

Whose  glory  shone  round  Shakespeare's,  bright  as  now, 
One  eye  beheld  their  light  shine  full  as  fame's, 

One  hand  unveiled  it:  this  did  none  but  thou. 
Love,    stronger  than   forgetfulness   and   sleep, 

Rose,  and  bade  memory  rise,  and  England  hear: 
And  all  the  harvest  left  so  long  to  reap 

Shone  ripe  and  rich  in  every  sheaf  and  ear. 

A  child  it  was  who  first  by  grace  of  thine 

Communed  with  gods  who  share  with  thee  their  shrine: 

Elder  than  thou  wast  ever  now  I  am, 
Now  that  I  lay  before  thee  in  thanksgiving 
Praise   of   dead  men   divine   and  everliving 

Whose  praise  is  thine  as  thine  is  theirs,  Charles  Lamb. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHRISTOPHER  MARLOWE i 

JOHN  WEBSTER 15 

THOMAS  DEKKER 61 

JOHN  MARSTON 112 

THOMAS  MIDDLETON 150 

WILLIAM  ROWLEY 187 

THOMAS  HEYWOOD 200 

GEORGE  CHAPMAN       255 

CYRIL  TOURNEUR 262 

INDEX 291 


THE 
AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 


CHRISTOPHER   MARLOWE 

The  first  great  English  poet  was  the  father  of 
EngHsh  tragedy  and  the  creator  of  Enghsh  blank 
verse.  Chaucer  and  Spenser  were  great  writers 
and  great  men :  they  shared  between  them  every 
gift  which  goes  to  the  making  of  a  poet  except 
the  one  which  alone  can  make  a  poet,  in  the 
proper  sense  of  the  word,  great.  Neither  pathos 
nor  humor  nor  fancy  nor  invention  will  suffice 
for  that:  no  poet  is  great  as  a  poet  whom  no 
one  could  ever  pretend  to  recognize  as  sublime. 
Sublimity  is  the  test  of  imagination  as  distin- 
guished from  invention  or  from  fancy:  and  the 
first  English  poet  whose  powers  can  be  called 
sublime   was  Christopher  Marlowe. 

The  majestic  and  exquisite  excellence  of  va- 
rious lines  and  passages  in  Marlowe's  first  play 
must  be  admitted  to  relieve,  if  it  cannot  be  allow- 
ed to  redeem,  the  stormy  monotony  of  Titanic 
truculence  which  blusters  like  a  simoom  through 
the  noisy  course  of  its  ten  fierce  acts.  With  many 


2  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

and  heavy  faults,  there  is  something  of  genuine 
greatness  in  " Tamburlaine  the  Great";  and  for 
two  grave  reasons  it  must  always  be  remembered 
with  distinction  and  mentioned  with  honor.  It 
is  the  first  poem  ever  written  in  English  blank 
verse,  as  distinguished  from  mere  rhymeless 
decasyllabics;  and  it  contains  one  of  the  noblest 
passages — perhaps,  indeed,  the  noblest  in  the  lit- 
erature of  the  world — ever  written  by  one  of  the 
greatest  masters  of  poetry  in  loving  praise  of  the 
glorious  delights  and  sublime  submission  to  the 
everlasting  limits  of  his  art.  In  its  highest  and 
most  distinctive  qualities,  in  unfaltering  and  in- 
fallible command  of  the  right  note  of  music  and 
the  proper  tone  of  color  for  the  finest  touches 
of  poetic  execution,  no  poet  of  the  most  elabo- 
rate modern  school,  working  at  ease  upon  every 
consummate  resource  of  luxurious  learning  and 
leisurely  refinement,  has  ever  excelled  the  best 
and  most  representative  work  of  a  man  who  had 
literally  no  models  before  him,  and  probably  or 
evidently  was  often,  if  not  always,  compelled  to 
write  against  time  for  his  living. 

The  just  and  generous  judgment  passed  by 
Goethe  on  the  "Faustus"  of  his  English  pred- 
ecessor in  tragic  treatment  of  the  same  subject 
is  somewhat  more  than  sufficient  to  counterbal- 
ance the  slighting  or  the  sneering  references  to 


CHRISTOPHER   MARLOWE  3 

that  magnificent  poem  which  might  have  been 
expected  from  the  ignorance  of  Byron  or  the 
incompetence  of  Hallam.  And  the  particular 
note  of  merit  observed,  the  special  point  of  the 
praise  conferred,  by  the  great  German  poet  should 
be  no  less  sufficient  to  dispose  of  the  vulgar  mis- 
conception yet  lingering  among  sciolists  and  pre- 
tenders to  criticism,  which  regards  a  writer  than 
whom  no  man  was  ever  born  with  a  finer  or  a 
stronger  instinct  for  perfection  of  excellence  in 
execution  as  a  mere  noble  savage  of  letters,  a 
rough  self-taught  sketcher  or  scribbler  of  crude 
and  rude  genius,  whose  unhewn  blocks  of  verse 
had  in  them  some  veins  of  rare  enough  metal  to 
be  quarried  and  polished  by  Shakespeare.  What 
most  impressed  the  author  of  "  Faust "  in  the  work 
of  Marlowe  was  a  quality  the  want  of  which  in  the 
author  of  "Manfred"  is  proof  enough  to  consign 
his  best  work  to  the  second  or  third  class  at  most. 
"  How  greatly  it  is  all  planned!"  the  first  requisite 
of  all  great  work,  and  one  of  which  the  highest 
genius  possible  to  a  greatly  gifted  barbarian  could 
by  no  possibility  understand  the  nature  or  con- 
ceive the  existence.  That  Goethe  "had  thought 
of  translating  it"  is  perhaps  hardly  less  precious 
a  tribute  to  its  greatness  than  the  fact  that  it  has 
been  actually  and  admirably  translated  by  the 
matchless  translator  of  Shakespeare — the  son  of 


4  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

Victor  Hugo,  whose  labor  of  love  may  thus  be 
said  to  have  made  another  point  in  common,  and 
forged  as  it  were  another  link  of  union,  between 
Shakespeare  and  the  young  master  of  Shake- 
speare's youth.  Of  all  great  poems  in  dramatic 
form  it  is  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  for  abso- 
lute singleness  of  aim  and  simplicity  of  construc- 
tion ;  yet  is  it  wholly  free  from  all  possible  imputa- 
tion of  monotony  or  aridity.  "  Tamburlaine  "  is 
monotonous  in  the  general  roll  and  flow  of  its 
stately  and  sonorous  verse  through  a  noisy  wilder- 
ness of  perpetual  bluster  and  slaughter;  but  the 
unity  of  tone  and  purpose  in  "Doctor  Faustus" 
is  not  unrelieved  by  change  of  manner  and 
variety  of  incident.  The  comic  scenes,  written 
evidently  with  as  little  of  labor  as  of  relish,  are  for 
the  most  part  scarcely  more  than  transcripts, 
thrown  into  the  form  of  dialogue,  from  a  popular 
prose  History  of  Dr.  Faustus,  and  therefore 
should  be  set  down  as  little  to  the  discredit 
as  to  the  credit  of  the  poet.  Few  masterpieces 
of  any  age  in  any  language  can  stand  beside  this 
tragic  poem — it  has  hardly  the  structure  of  a 
play — for  the  qualities  of  terror  and  splendor, 
for  intensity  of  purpose  and  sublimity  of  note. 
In  the  vision  of  Helen,  for  example,  the  intense 
perception  of  loveliness  gives  actual  sublimity  to 
the  sweetness  and  radiance  of  mere  beauty  in  the 


CHRISTOPHER   MARLOWE  5 

passionate  and  spontaneous  selection  of  words 
the  most  choice  and  perfect;  and  in  Hke  manner 
the  subHmity  of  simplicity  in  Marlowe's  concep- 
tion and  expression  of  the  agonies  endured  by 
Faustus  under  the  immediate  imminence  of  his 
doom  gives  the  highest  note  of  beauty,  the  qual- 
ity of  absolute  fitness  and  propriety,  to  the  sheer 
straightforwardness  of  speech  in  which  his  ago- 
nizing horror  finds  vent  ever  more  and  more  ter- 
rible from  the  first  to  the  last  equally  beautiful 
and  fearful  verse  of  that  tremendous  monologue 
which  has  no  parallel  in  all  the  range  of  tragedy. 
It  is  now  a  commonplace  of  criticism  to  ob- 
serve and  regret  the  decline  of  power  and  interest 
after  the  opening  acts  of  "The  Jew  of  Malta." 
This  decline  is  undeniable,  though  even  the  latter 
part  of  the  play  is  not  wanting  in  rough  energy 
and  a  coarse  kind  of  interest;  but  the  first  two 
acts  would  be  sufficient  foundation  for  the  dura- 
ble fame  of  a  dramatic  poet.  In  the  blank  verse 
of  Milton  alone,  who  perhaps  was  hardly  less 
indebted  than  Shakespeare  was  before  him  to 
Marlowe  as  the  first  English  master  of  w^ord- 
music  in  its  grander  forms,  has  the  glory  or  the 
melody  of  passages  in  the  opening  soliloquy  of 
Barabas  been  possibly  surpassed.  The  figure  of 
the  hero  before  it  degenerates  into  caricature  is  as 
finely  touched  as  the  poetic  execution  is  excellent ; 


6  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

and  the  rude  and  rapid  sketches  of  the  minor 
characters  show  at  least  some  vigor  and  vivacity 
of  touch. 

In  "  Edward  II."  the  interest  rises  and  th?  ex- 
ecution improves  as  visibly  and  as  greatly  with 
the  course  of  the  advancing  story  as  they  de- 
cline in  "The  Jew  of  Malta."  The  scene  of  the 
king's  deposition  at  Kenilworth  is  almost  as  much 
finer  in  tragic  effect  and  poetic  quality  as  it  is 
shorter  and  less  elaborate  than  the  corresponding 
scene  in  Shakespeare's  "King  Richard  II."  The 
terror  of  the  death  scene  undoubtedly  rises  into 
horror ;  but  this  horror  is  with  skilful  simplicity  of 
treatment  preserved  from  passing  into  disgust. 
In  pure  poetry,  in  sublime  and  splendid  imagina- 
tion, this  tragedy  is  excelled  by  "Doctor  Faus- 
tus";  in  dramatic  power  and  positive  impression 
of  natural  effect  it  is  as  certainly  the  masterpiece 
of  Marlowe.  It  was  almost  inevitable,  in  the 
hands  of  any  poet  but  Shakespeare,  that  none  of 
the  characters  represented  should  be  capable  of 
securing  or  even  exciting  any  finer  sympathy  or 
more  serious  interest  than  attends  on  the  mere 
evolution  of  successive  events  or  the  mere  dis- 
play of  emotions  (except  always  in  the  great 
scene  of  the  deposition)  rather  animal  than 
spiritual  in  their  expression  of  rage  or  tenderness 
or  suffering.     The  exact  balance  of  mutual  effect, 


CHRISTOPHER   MARLOWE  7 

the  final  note  of  scenic  harmony  between  ideal 
conception  and  realistic  execution,  is  not  yet 
struck  with  perfect  accuracy  of  touch  and  se- 
curity of  hand;  but  on  this  point  also  Marlowe 
has  here  come  nearer  by  many  degrees  to  Shake- 
speare than  any  of  his  other  predecessors  have 
ever  come  near  to  Marlowe, 

Of  "The  Massacre  at  Paris"  it  is  impossible  to 
judge  fairly  from  the  garbled  fragment  of  its 
genuine  text,  which  is  all  that  has  come  down 
to  us.  To  Mr.  Collier,  among  numberless  other 
obligations,  we  owe  the  discovery  of  a  striking 
passage  excised  in  the  piratical  edition  which 
gives  us  the  only  version  extant  of  this  unlucky 
play;  and  which,  it  must  be  allowed,  contains 
nothing  of  quite  equal  value.  This  is  obviously 
an  occasional  and  polemical  work,  and  being  as  it 
is  overcharged  with  the  anti-Catholic  passion  of 
the  time,  has  a  typical  quality  which  gives  it  some 
empirical  significance  and  interest.  That  anti- 
papal  ardor  is  indeed  the  only  note  of  unity  in  a 
rough  and  ragged  chronicle  which  shambles  and 
stumbles  onward  from  the  death  of  Queen  Jeanne 
of  Navarre  to  the  murder  of  the  last  Valois.  It 
is  possible  to  conjecture  what  it  would  be  fruitless 
to  affirm,  that  it  gave  a  hint  in  the  next  century 
to  Nathaniel  Lee  for  his  far  superior  and  really 
admirable  tragedy  on  the  same  subject,  issued 


8  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

ninety -seven  years  after  the  death  of  Mar- 
lowe. 

The  tragedy  of  "Dido,  Queen  of  Carthage," 
was  probably  completed  for  the  stage  after  that 
irreparable  and  incalculable  loss  to  English  letters 
by  Thomas  Nash,  the  worthiest  English  precursor 
of  Swift  in  vivid,  pure,  and  passionate  prose, 
embodying  the  most  terrible  and  splendid  quali- 
ties of  a  personal  and  social  satirist ;  a  man  gifted 
also  with  some  fair  faculty  of  elegiac  and  even 
lyric  verse,  but  in  nowise  qualified  to  put  on  the 
buskin  left  behind  him  by  the  "famous  gracer  of 
tragedians,"  as  Marlowe  had  already  been  des- 
ignated by  their  common  friend  Greene  from 
among  the  worthiest  of  his  fellows.  In  this  some- 
what thin-spun  and  evidently  hasty  play  a  servile 
fidelity  to  the  text  of  Virgil's  narrative  has  nat- 
urally resulted  in  the  failure  which  might  have 
been  expected  from  an  attempt  at  once  to  tran- 
scribe what  is  essentially  inimitable  and  to  repro- 
duce it  under  the  hopelessly  alien  conditions  of 
dramatic  adaptation.  The  one  really  noble  pas- 
sage in  a  generally  feeble  and  incomposite  piece 
of  work  is,  however,  uninspired  by  the  unattain- 
able model  to  which  the  dramatists  have  been 
only  too  obsequious  in  their  subservience. 

It  is  as  nearly  certain  as  anything  can  be 
which    depends    chiefly    upon    cumulative    and 


CHRISTOPHER   MARLOWE  9 

collateral  evidence  that  the  better  part  of  what  is 
best  in  the  serious  scenes  of  "  King  Henry  VI."  is 
mainly  the  work  of  Marlowe.  That  he  is,  at  any 
rate,  the  principal  author  of  the  second  and  third 
plays  passing  under  that  name  among  the  works 
of  Shakespeare,  but  first  and  imperfectly  printed 
as  "The  Contention  between  the  two  Famous 
Houses  of  York  and  Lancaster,"  can  hardly  be 
now  a  matter  of  debate  among  competent  judges. 
The  crucial  difficulty  of  criticism  in  this  matter  is 
to  determine,  if  indeed  we  should  not  rather  say 
to  conjecture,  the  authorship  of  the  humorous 
scenes  in  prose,  showing  as  they  generally  do  a 
power  of  comparatively  high  and  pure  comnc 
realism  to  which  nothing  in  the  acknowledged 
works  of  any  pre-Shakespearean  dramatist  is  even 
remotely  comparable.  Yet,  especially  in  the  orig- 
inal text  of  these  scenes  as  they  stand  unpuri- 
fied  by  the  ultimate  revision  of  Shakespeare, 
there  are  tones  and  touches  which  recall  rather 
the  clownish  horseplay  and  homely  ribaldry  of 
his  predecessors  than  anything  in  the  lighter 
interludes  of  his  very  earliest  plays.  We  find 
the  same  sort  of  thing  which  we  find  in  their 
writings,  only  better  done  than  they  usually  do 
it,  rather  than  such  work  as  Shakespeare's  a  little 
worse  done  than  usual.  And  even  in  the  final 
text  of  the  tragic  or  metrical  scenes  the  highest 


lo  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

note  struck  is  always,  with  one  magnificent  and 
unquestionable  exception,  rather  in  the  key  of 
Marlowe'  at  his  best  than  of  Shakespeare  while 
yet  in  great  measure  his  disciple. 

It  is  another  commonplace  of  criticism  to 
affirm  that  Marlowe  had  not  a  touch  of  comic 
genius,  not  a  gleam  of  wit  in  him  or  a  twinkle  of 
humor:  but  it  is  an  indisputable  fact  that  he 
had.  In  "The  Massacre  at  Paris,"  the  soliloquy 
of  the  soldier  lying  in  wait  for  the  minion  of 
Henri  III.  has  the  same  very  rough  but  very  real 
humor  as  a  passage  in  the  "Contention"  which 
was  cancelled  by  the  reviser.  The  same  hand  is 
unmistakable  in  both  these  broad  and  boyish 
outbreaks  of  unseemly  but  undeniable  fun :  and  if 
we  might  wish  it  rather  less  indecorous,  we  must 
admit  that  the  tradition  which  denies  all  sense  of 
humor  and  all  instinct  of  wit  to  the  first  great 
poet  of  England  is  no  less  unworthy  of  serious 
notice  or  elaborate  refutation  than  the  charges 
and  calumnies  of  an  informer  who  was  duly  hang- 
ed the  year  after  Marlowe's  death.  For  if  the 
same  note  of  humor  is  struck  in  an  undoubted 
play  of  Marlowe's  and  in  a  play  of  disputed 
authorship,  it  is  evident  that  the  rest  of  the 
scene  in  the  latter  play  must  also  be  Marlowe's. 
And  in  that  unquestionable  case  the  superb  and 
savage  humor  of  the  terribly  comic  scenes  which 


CHRISTOPHER   MARLOWE  ii 

represent  with  such  rough  magnificence  of  realism 
the  riot  of  Jack  Cade  and  his  ruffians  through  the 
ravaged  streets  of  London  must  be  recognizable 
as  no  other  man's  than  his.  It  is  a  pity  we  have 
not  before  us  for  comparison  the  comic  scenes 
or  burlesque  interludes  of  "  Tamburlaine  "  which 
the  printer  or  publisher,  as  he  had  the  impudence 
to  avow  in  his  prefatory  note,  purposely  omitted 
and  left  out. 

The  author  of  A  Study  of  Shakespeare  was 
therefore  wrong,  and  utterly  wrong,  when  in  a 
book  issued  some  quarter  of  a  century  ago  he 
followed  the  lead  of  Mr.  Dyce  in  assuming  that 
because  the  author  of  "Doctor  Faustus"  and 
"The  Jew  of  Malta"  "was  as  certainly" — and 
certainly  it  is  difficult  to  deny  that  whether  as 
a  mere  transcriber  or  as  an  original  dealer  in 
pleasantry  he  sometimes  was — "one  of  the  least 
and  worst  among  jesters  as  he  was  one  of  the 
best  and  greatest  among  poets,"  he  could  not 
have  had  a  hand  in  the  admirable  comic  scenes 
of  "  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew."  For  it  is  now,  I 
should  hope,  unnecessary  to  insist  that  the  able 
and  conscientious  editor  to  whom  his  fame  and 
his  readers  owe  so  great  a  debt  was  over-hasty  in 
assuming  and  asserting  that  he  was  a  poet  "to 
whom,  we  have  reason  to  believe,  nature  had 
denied  even  a  moderate  talent  for  the  humorous," 


12  THE   AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

The  serious  or  would-be  poetical  scenes  of  the 
play  are  as  unmistakably  the  work  of  an  imitator 
as  are  most  of  the  better  passages  in  "Titus 
Andronicus"  and  "King  Edward  III."  Greene 
or  Peele  may  be  responsible  for  the  bad  poetry, 
but  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  great 
poet  whose  mannerisms  he  imitated  with  so  stu- 
pid a  servility  was  incapable  of  the  good  fun. 

Had  every  copy  of  Marlowe's  boyish  version 
or  perversion  of  Ovid's  Elegies  deservedly  per- 
ished in  the  flames  to  which  it  was  judicially  con- 
demned by  the  sentence  of  a  brace  of  prelates, 
it  is  possible  that  an  occasional  bookworm,  it  is 
certain  that  no  poetical  student,  would  have  de- 
plored its  destruction,  if  its  demerits — hardly  re- 
lieved, as  his  first  competent  editor  has  happily 
remarked,  by  the  occasional  incidence  of  a  fine 
and  felicitous  couplet — could  in  that  case  have 
been  imagined.  His  translation  of  the  first  book 
of  Lucan  alternately  rises  above  the  original  and 
falls  short  of  it;  often  inferior  to  the  Latin  in 
point  and  weight  of  expressive  rhetoric,  now  and 
then  brightened  by  a  clearer  note  of  poetry  and 
lifted  into  a  higher  mood  of  verse.  Its  terseness, 
vigor,  and  purity  of  style  would  in  any  case  have 
been  praiseworthy,  but  are  nothing  less  than  ad- 
mirable, if  not  wonderful,  when  we  consider  how 
close  the  translator  has  on  the  whole  (in  spite 


CHRISTOPHER   MARLOWE  13 

of  occasional  slips  into  inaccuracy)  kept  himself 
to  the  most  rigid  limit  of  literal  representation, 
phrase  by  phrase  and  often  line  by  line.  The 
really  startling  force  and  felicity  of  occasional 
verses  are  worthier  of  remark  than  the  inevitable 
stiffness  and  heaviness  of  others,  when  the  tech- 
nical difficulty  of  such  a  task  is  duly  taken  into 
account. 

One  of  the  most  faultless  lyrics  and  one  of  the 
loveliest  fragments  in  the  whole  range  of  descrip- 
tive and  fanciful  poetry  would  have  secured  a 
place  for  Marlowe  among  the  memorable  men  of 
his  epoch,  even  if  his  plays  had  perished  with  him- 
self. His  "Passionate  Shepherd"  remains  ever 
since  unrivalled  in  its  way — a  way  of  pure  fancy 
and  radiant  melody  without  break  or  lapse.  The 
untitled  fragment,  on  the  other  hand,  has  been 
very  closely  rivalled,  perhaps  very  happily  imi- 
tated, but  only  by  the  greatest  lyric  poet  of 
England — by  Shelley  alone.  Marlowe's  poem  of 
"Hero  and  Leander,"  closing  with  the  sunrise 
which  closes  the  night  of  the  lovers'  union,  stands 
alone  in  its  age,  and  far  ahead  of  the  work  of  any 
possible  competitor  between  the  death  of  Spenser 
and  the  dawn  of  Milton.  In  clear  mastery  of 
narrative  and  presentation,  in  melodious  ease 
and  simplicity  of  strength,  it  is  not  less  pre- 
eminent than  in  the  adorable  beauty  and  im- 


14  THE   AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

peccable   perfection    of    separate  lines  or   pas- 
sages. 

The  place  and  the  value  of  Christopher  Mar- 
lowe as  a  leader  among  English  poets  it  would  be 
almost  impossible  for  historical  criticism  to  over- 
estimate. To  none  of  them  all,  perhaps,  have  so 
many  of  the  greatest  among  them  been  so  deeply 
and  so  directly  indebted.  Nor  was  ever  any 
great  writer's  influence  upon  his  fellows  more 
utterly  and  unmixedly  an  influence  for  good.  He 
first,  and  he  alone,  guided  Shakespeare  into  the 
right  way  of  work;  his  music,  in  which  there  is 
no  echo  of  any  man's  before  him,  found  its  own 
echo  in  the  more  prolonged  but  hardly  more 
exalted  harmony  of  Milton's.  He  is  the  greatest 
discoverer,  the  most  daring  and  inspired  pioneer, 
in  all  our  poetic  literature.  Before  him  there 
was  neither  genuine  blank  verse  nor  genuine 
tragedy  in  our  language.  After  his  arrival  the 
way  was  prepared,  the  paths  were  made  straight, 
for  Shakespeare. 


JOHN   WEBSTER 

There  were  many  poets  in  the  age  of  Shake- 
speare who  make  us  think,  as  we  read  them, 
that  the  characters  in  their  plays  could  not  have 
spoken  more  beautifully,  more  powerfully,  more 
effectively,  under  the  circumstances  imagined 
for  the  occasion  of  their  utterance :  there  are  only 
two  who  make  us  feel  that  the  words  assigned 
to  the  creatures  of  their  genius  are  the  very 
words  they  must  have  said,  the  only  words  the^' 
could  have  said,  the  actual  words  they  assured- 
ly did  say.  Mere  literary  power,  mere  poetic 
beauty,  mere  charm  of  passionate  or  pathetic 
fancy,  we  find  in  varying  degrees  dispersed 
among  them  all  alike;  but  the  crowning  gift  of 
imagination,  the  power  to  make  us  realize  that 
thus  and  not  otherwise  it  was,  that  thus  and  not 
othen^ase  it  must  have  been,  was  given — except 
by  exceptional  fits  and  starts — to  none  of  the 
poets  of  their  time  but  only  to  Shakespeare  and 
to  Webster. 

Webster,  it  may  be  said,  was  but  as  it  were  a 


i6  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

limb  of  Shakespeare:  but  that  Hmb,  it  might  be 
replied,  was  the  right  arm.  "The  kingly-crown- 
ed head,  the  vigilant  eye,"  whose  empire  of 
thought  and  whose  reach  of  vision  no  other  man's 
faculty  has  ever  been  found  competent  to  match, 
are  Shakespeare's  alone  forever:  but  the  force  of 
hand,  the  fire  of  heart,  the  fervor  of  pity,  the 
sympathy  of  passion,  not  poetic  or  theatric  mere- 
ly, but  actual  and  immediate,  are  qualities  in 
which  the  lesser  poet  is  not  less  certainly  or  less 
unmistakably  pre  -  eminent  than  the  greater. 
And  there  is  no  third  to  be  set  beside  them :  not 
even  if  we  turn  from  their  contemporaries  to 
Shelley  himself.  All  that  Beatrice  says  in  The 
Cenci  is  beautiful  and  conceivable  and  admirable : 
but  unless  we  except  her  exquisite  last  words — 
and  even  they  are  more  beautiful  than  inevitable 
— we  shall  hardly  find  what  we  find  in  * '  King 
Lear  "and  "  The  White  Devil,"  "Othello  "and 
"The  Duchess  of  Malfy  " — the  tone  of  convinc- 
ing reality ;  the  note,  as  a  critic  of  our  own  day 
might  call  it,  of  certitude. 

There  are  poets — in  our  own  age,  as  in  all  past 
ages — from  whose  best  work  it  might  be  difficult 
to  choose  at  a  glance  some  verse  sufficient  to 
establish  their  claim — great  as  their  claim  may 
be  —  to  be  remembered  forever ;  and  who  yet 
may  be  worthy  of  remembrance  among  all  but 


JOHN   WEBSTER  17 

the  highest.  Webster  is  not  one  of  these :  though 
his  fame  assuredly  does  not  depend  upon  the 
merit  of  a  casual  passage  here  or  there,  it  would 
be  easy  to  select  from  any  one  of  his  represent- 
ative plays  such  examples  of  the  highest,  the 
purest,  the  most  perfect  power,  as  can  be  found 
only  in  the  works  of  the  greatest  among  poets. 
There  is  not,  as  far  as  my  studies  have  ever  ex- 
tended, a  third  English  poet  to  whom  these 
words  might  rationally  be  attributed  by  the  con- 
jecture of  a  competent  reader: 

We  cease  to  grieve,  cease  to  be  fortune's  slaves, 
Nay,  cease  to  die,  by  dying. 

There  is  a  depth  of  severe  sense  in  them,  a  height 
of  heroic  scorn,  or  a  dignity  of  quiet  cynicism, 
which  can  scarcely  be  paralleled  in  the  bitterest 
or  the  fiercest  effusions  of  John  Marston  or  Cyril 
Toumeur  or  Jonathan  Swift.  Nay,  were  they  not 
put  into  the  mouth  of  a  criminal  cynic,  they 
would  not  seem  unworthy  of  Epictetus.  There 
is  nothing  so  grand  in  the  part  of  Edmund;  the 
one  figure  in  Shakespeare  whose  aim  in  life, 
whose  centre  of  character,  is  one  with  the  view 
or  the  instinct  of  Webster's  two  typical  villains. 
Some  touches  in  the  part  of  Flamineo  suggest, 
if  not  a  conscious  imitation,  an  unconscious 
reminiscence  of  that  prototype :  but  the  essential 


i8  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

and  radical  originality  of  Webster's  genius  Is 
shown  in  the  difference  of  accent  with  which  the 
same  savage  and  sarcastic  philosophy  of  self- 
interest  finds  expression  through  the  snarl  and 
sneer  of  his  ambitious  cynic.  Monsters  as  they 
may  seem  of  unnatural  egotism  and  unallayed 
ferocity,  the  one  who  dies  penitent,  though  his 
repentance  be  as  sudden  if  not  as  suspicious  as 
any  ever  wrought  by  miraculous  conversion,  dies 
as  thoroughly  in  character  as  the  one  who  takes 
leave  of  life  in  a  passion  of  scorn  and  defiant  irony 
which  hardly  passes  off  at  last  into  a  mood  of 
mocking  and  triumphant  resignation.  There  is  a 
cross  of  heroism  in  almost  all  Webster's  charac- 
ters which  preserves  the  worst  of  them  from  such 
hatefulness  as  disgusts  us  in  certain  of  Fletcher's 
or  of  Ford's :  they  have  in  them  some  salt  of  man- 
hood, some  savor  of  venturesome  and  humorous 
resolution,  which  reminds  us  of  the  heroic  age  in 
which  the  genius  that  begot  them  was  bom  and 
reared — the  age  of  Richard  Grenville  and  Francis 
Drake,  Philip  Sidney  and  William  Shakespeare. 
The  earliest  play  of  Webster's  now  surviving 
— if  a  work  so  piteously  mutilated  and  defaced 
can  properly  be  said  to  survive — is  a  curious 
example  of  the  combined  freedom  and  realism 
with  which  recent  or  even  contemporary  history 
was  habitually  treated  on  the  stage  during  the 


JOHN   WEBSTER  19 

last  years  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  The 
noblest  poem  known  to  me  of  this  peculiar  kind 
is  the  play  of  "Sir  Thomas  More,"  first  printed 
by  Mr.  Dyce  in  1844  for  the  Shakespeare  Society: 
the  worst  must  almost  certainly  be  that  "  Chron- 
icle History  of  Thomas  Lord  Cromwell"  which 
the  infallible  verdict  of  German  intuition  has  dis- 
covered to  be  "not  only  unquestionably  Shake- 
speare's, but  worthy  to  be  classed  among  his  best 
and  maturest  works."  About  midway  between 
these  two  I  should  be  inclined  to  rank  "  The  Fa- 
mous History  of  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt,"  a  mangled 
and  deformed  abridgment  of  a  tragedy  by  Dekker 
and  Webster  on  the  story  of  Lady  Jane  Grey.  In 
this  tragedy,  as  in  the  two  comedies  due  to  the 
collaboration  of  the  same  poets,  it  appears  to  me 
more  than  probable  that  Dekker  took  decidedly 
the  greater  part.  The  shambling  and  slipshod 
metre,  which  seems  now  and  then  to  hit  by  mere 
chance  on  some  pure  and  tender  note  of  simple 
and  exquisite  melody — the  lazy  vivacity  and  im- 
pulsive inconsequence  of  style  —  the  fitful  sort 
of  slovenly  inspiration,  with  interludes  of  abso- 
lute and  headlong  collapse  —  are  qualities  by 
which  a  very  novice  in  the  study  of  dramatic 
form  may  recognize  the  reckless  and  unmis- 
takable presence  of  Dekker.  The  curt  and 
grim  precision  of  Webster's  tone,  his  terse  and 


20  THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

pungent  force  of  compressed  rhetoric,  will  be 
found  equally  difficult  to  trace  in  any  of  these 
three  plays.  "Northward  Ho!"  a  clever,  coarse, 
and  vigorous  study  of  the  realistic  sort,  has  not  a 
note  of  poetry  in  it,  but  is  more  coherent,  more 
sensibly  conceived  and  more  ably  constructed, 
than  the  rambling  history  of  Wyatt  or  the  hybrid 
amalgam  of  prosaic  and  romantic  elements  in  the 
compound  comedy  of  "  Westward  Ho!"  All  that 
is  of  any  great  value  in  this  amorphous  and  in- 
congruous product  of  inventive  impatience  and 
impetuous  idleness  can  be  as  distinctly  traced  to 
the  hand  of  Dekker  as  the  crowning  glories  of 
"The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen"  can  be  traced  to  the 
hand  of  Shakespeare.  Any  poet,  even  of  his 
time,  might  have  been  proud  of  these  verses, 
but  the  accent  of  them  is  unmistakable  as  that 
of  Dekker. 

Go,  let  music 
Charm  with  her  excellent  voice  an  awful  silence 
Through  all  this  building,  that  her  sphery  soul 
May,  on  the  wings  of  air,  in  thousand  forms 
Invisibly  fly,  yet  be  enjoyed. 

This  delicate  fluency  and  distilled  refinement  of 
expression  ought  properly,  one  would  say,  to  have 
belonged  to  a  poet  of  such  careful  and  self- 
respectful  genius  as  Tennyson's:  whereas  in  the 
very  next  speech  of  the  same  speaker  we  stumble 


JOHN   WEBSTER  21 

over  such  a  phrase  as  that  which  closes  the  follow- 
ing sentence: 

We  feed,  wear  rich  attires,  and  strive  to  cleave 
The  stars  with  marble  towers,  fight  battles,  spend 
Oiir  blood  to  buy  us  names,  and,  in  iron  hold, 
Will  we  eat  roots,  to  imprison  fugitive  gold. 

Which  he  who  can  parse,  let  him  scan,  and  he 
who  can  scan,  let  him  construe.  It  is  alike  in- 
credible and  certain  that  the  writer  of  such  ex- 
quisite and  blameless  verse  as  that  in  which 
the  finer  scenes  of  "Old  Fortunatus"  and  "The 
Honest  Whore"  are  so  smoothly  and  simply  and 
naturally  written  should  have  been  capable  of 
writing  whole  plays  in  this  headlong  and  halting 
fashion,  as  helpless  and  graceless  as  the  action 
of  a  spavined  horse  or  a  cripple  who  should  at- 
tempt to  run. 

It  is  difficult  to  say  what  part  of  these  plays 
should  be  assigned  to  Webster.  Their  rough 
realistic  humor,  with  its  tone  of  somewhat  coarse- 
grained good-nature,  strikes  the  habitual  note  of 
Dekker's  comic  style:  there  is  nothing  of  the 
fierce  and  scornful  intensity,  the  ardor  of  pas- 
sionate and  compressed  contempt,  which  distin- 
guishes the  savagely  humorous  satire  of  Webster 
and  of  Marston,  and  makes  it  hopeless  to  deter- 
mine by  intrinsic  evidence  how  little  or  how  much 


22  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

was  added  by  Webster  in  the  second  edition  to 
the  original  text  of  Marston's  Malcontent:  unless 
— ^which  appears  to  me  not  unreasonable — we 
assume  that  the  printer  of  that  edition  lied  or 
blundered  after  the  manner  of  his  contemporary 
kind  in  attributing  on  the  title-page — as  ap- 
parently he  meant  to  attribute — any  share  in  the 
additional  scenes  or  speeches  to  the  original  au- 
thor of  the  play.  In  any  case,  the  passages  thus 
added  to  that  grimmest  and  most  sombre  of 
tragicomedies  are  in  such  exact  keeping  with  the 
previous  text  that  the  keenest  scent  of  the  veriest 
blood -hound  among  critics  could  not  detect  a 
shade  of  difference  in  the  savor. 

The  text  of  either  comedy  is  generally  very 
fair — as  free  from  corruption  as  could  reasonably 
be  expected.  The  text  of  "  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  " 
is  corrupt  as  well  as  mutilated.  Even  in  Mr. 
Dyce's  second  edition  I  have  noted,  not  without 
astonishment,  the  following  flagrant  errors  left 
still  to  glare  on  us  from  the  distorted  and  dis- 
figured page.  In  the  sixth  scene  a  single  speech 
of  Arundel's  contains  two  of  the  most  palpably 
preposterous: 

The  obligation  wherein  we  all  stood  bound 

Cannot  be  concealed  without  great  reproach 
To  us  and  to  our  issue, 


JOHN   WEBSTER  23 

We  should  of  course  read  "cancelled"  for  "con- 
cealed": the  sense  of  the  context  and  the  exi- 
gence of  the  verse  cry  alike  aloud  for  the  correc- 
tion. In  the  sixteenth  line  from  this  we  come 
upon  an  equally  obvious  error: 

Advice  in  this  I  hold  it  better  far, 

To  keep  the  course  we  run,  than,  seeking  change, 

Hazard  our  lives,  our  honors,  and  the  realm. 

It  seems  hardly  credible  to  those  who  are  aw^are 
how  much  they  owe  to  the  excellent  scholarship 
and  editorial  faculty  of  Mr.  Dyce,  that  he  should 
have  allowed  such  a  misprint  as  "heirs"  for 
"honors"  to  stand  in  this  last  unlucky  line. 
Again,  in  the  next  scene,  w^hen  the  popular  leader 
Captain  Brett  attempts  to  reassure  the  country 
folk  who  are  startled  at  the  sight  of  his  insurgent 
array,  he  is  made  to  utter  (in  reply  to  the  ex- 
clamation, "What's  here?  soldiers!")  the  per- 
fectly fatuous  phrase,  "Fear  not  good  speech." 
Of  course — once  more — we  should  read,  "Fear 
not,  good  people";  a  correction  which  rectifies 
the  metre  as  well  as  the  sense. 

The  play  attributed  to  Webster  and  Rowley  by 
a  publisher  of  the  next  generation  has  been  care- 
fully and  delicately  analyzed  by  a  critic  of  our 
own  time,  who  naturally  finds  it  easy  to  dis- 
tinguish the  finer  from  the  homelier  part  of  the 


24  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

compound  weft,  and  to  assign  what  is  rough  and 
crude  to  the  inferior,  what  is  interesting  and 
graceful  to  the  superior  poet.  The  authority  of 
the  rogue  Kirkman  may  be  likened  to  the  out- 
line or  profile  of  Mr.  Mantalini's  early  loves:  it 
is  either  no  authority  at  all,  or  at  best  it  is  a 
"demd"  authority.  The  same  swindler  who 
assigned  to  Webster  and  Rowley  the  authorship 
of  "A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold"  assigned  to  Shake- 
speare and  Rowley  the  authorship  of  an  infinitely 
inferior  play — a  play  of  which  German  sagacity 
has  discovered  that  "none  of  Rowley's  other 
works  are  equal  to  this."  Assuredly  they  are 
not — in  utter  stolidity  of  platitude  and  absolute 
impotence  of  drivel.  Rowley  w^as  a  vigorous 
artist  in  comedy  and  an  original  master  of  trag- 
edy :  he  may  have  written  the  lighter  or  broader 
parts  of  the  play  which  rather  unluckily  took  its 
name  from  these,  and  Webster  may  have  written 
the  more  serious  or  sentimental  parts:  but  there 
is  not  the  slightest  shadow  of  a  reason  to  suppose 
it.  An  obviously  apocryphal  abortion  of  the 
same  date,  attributed  to  the  same  poets  by  the 
same  knave,  has  long  since  been  struck  off  the 
roll  of  Webster's  works. 

The  few  occasional  poems  of  this  great  poet 
are  worth  study  by  those  who  are  capable  of  feel- 
ing interest  in  the  comparison  of  slighter  with 


JOHN   WEBSTER  25 

sublimer  things,  and  the  detection  in  minor  works 
of  the  same  style,  here  revealed  by  fitful  hints  in 
casual  phrases,  as  that  which  animates  and  dis- 
tinguishes even  a  work  so  insufficient  and  incom- 
petent as  Webster's  " tragecomoedy "  of  "The 
Devil's  Law-case."  The  noble  and  impressive 
extracts  from  this  most  incoherent  and  chaotic 
of  all  plays  which  must  be  familiar  to  all  students 
of  Charles  Lamb  are  but  patches  of  imperial 
purple  sewn  on  with  the  roughest  of  needles  to  a 
garment  of  the  raggedest  and  coarsest  kind  of 
literary  serge.  Hardly  any  praise  can  be  too 
high  for  their  dignity  and  beauty,  their  lofty 
loyalty  and  simplicity  of  chivalrous  manhood  or 
their  deep  sincerity  of  cynic  meditation  and  self- 
contemptuous  moumf  ulness :  and  the  reader  who 
turns  from  these  magnificent  samples  to  the 
complete  play  must  expect  to  find  yet  another 
and  a  yet  unknown  masterpiece  of  English 
tragedy.  He  will  find  a  crowning  example  of  the 
famous  theorem,  that  "the  plot  is  of  no  use 
except  to  bring  in  the  fine  things."  The  plot  is 
in  this  instance  absurd  to  a  degree  so  far  beyond 
the  most  preposterous  conception  of  confused 
and  distracting  extravagance  that  the  reader's 
attention  may  at  times  be  withdrawn  from  the 
all  but  unqualified  ugliness  of  its  ethical  tone  or 
tendency.     Two  of  Webster's  favorite  types,  the 


36  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

meditative  murderer  or  philosophic  ruffian,  and 
the  impulsive  impostor  who  is  liable  to  collapse 
into  the  likeness  of  a  passionate  penitent,  will 
remind  the  reader  how  much  better  they  appear 
in  tragedies  which  are  carried  through  to  their 
natural  tragic  end.  But  here,  where  the  story  is 
admirably  opened  and  the  characters  as  skilfully 
introduced,  the  strong  interest  thus  excited  at 
starting  is  scattered  or  broken  or  trifled  away 
before  the  action  is  half-way  through :  and  at  its 
close  the  awkward  violence  or  irregularity  of 
moral  and  scenical  effect  comes  to  a  crowning 
crisis  in  the  general  and  mutual  condonation  of 
unnatural  perjury  and  attempted  murder  with 
which  the  victims  and  the  criminals  agree  to  hush 
up  all  grudges,  shake  hands  all  round,  and  live 
happy  ever  after.  There  is  at  least  one  point 
of  somewhat  repulsive  resemblance  between  the 
story  of  this  play  and  that  of  Fletcher's  "Fair 
Maid  of  the  Inn" :  but  Fletcher's  play,  with  none 
of  the  tragic  touches  or  interludes  of  superb  and 
sombre  poetry  which  relieve  the  incoherence  of 
Webster's,  is  better  laid  out  and  constructed, 
more  amusing  if  not  more  interesting,  and  more 
intelligent  if  not  more  imaginative. 

A  far  more  creditable  and  workman-like  piece 
of  work,  though  glorified  by  no  flashes  of  such 
sudden  and  singular  beauty,  is  the  tragedy  of 


JOHN   WEBSTER  27 

"Appius  and  Virginia."  The  almost  infinite 
superiority  of  Webster  to  Fletcher  as  a  poet  of 
pure  tragedy  and  a  painter  of  masculine  character 
is  in  this  play  as  obvious  as  the  inferiority  in 
construction  and  conduct  of  romantic  story  dis- 
played in  his  attempt  at  a  tragicomedy.  From 
the  evidence  of  style  I  should  judge  this  play  to 
have  been  written  at  an  earlier  date  than  "The 
Devil's  Law-case" :  it  is,  I  repeat,  far  better  com- 
posed; better,  perhaps,  than  any  other  play  of 
the  author's :  but  it  has  none  of  his  more  distinc- 
tive qualities;  intensity  of  idea,  concentration  of 
utterance,  pungency  of  expression  and  ardor  of 
pathos.  It  is  written  with  noble  and  equable 
power  of  hand,  with  force  and  purity  and  fluency 
of  apt  and  simple  eloquence:  there  is  nothing  in 
it  unworthy  of  the  writer:  but  it  is  the  only  one 
of  his  unassisted  works  in  which  we  do  not  find 
that  especial  note  of  tragic  style,  concise  and 
pointed  and  tipped  as  it  were  with  fire,  which 
usually  makes  it  impossible  for  the  dullest  reader 
to  mistake  the  peculiar  presence,  the  original 
tone  or  accent,  of  John  Webster.  If  the  epithet 
unique  had  not  such  a  tang  of  German  affectation 
in  it,  it  would  be  perhaps  the  aptest  of  all  ad- 
jectives to  denote  the  genius  or  define  the  man- 
ner of  this  great  poet.  But  in  this  tragedy, 
though  whatever  is  said  is  well  said  and  what- 


28  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

ever  is  done  well  done,  we  miss  that  sense  of 
positive  and  inevitable  conviction,  that  instant 
and  profound  perception  or  impression  as  of  im- 
mediate and  indisputable  truth,  which  is  burnt 
in  upon  us  as  we  read  the  more  Websterian 
scenes  of  Webster's  writing.  We  feel,  in  short, 
that  thus  it  may  have  been;  not,  as  I  observed  at 
the  opening  of  these  notes,  that  thus  it  must 
have  been.  The  poem  does  him  no  discredit; 
nay,  it  does  him  additional  honor,  as  an  evidence 
of  powers  more  various  and  many-sided  than  we 
should  otherwise  have  known  or  supposed  in 
him.  Indeed,  the  figure  of  Virginius  is  one  of 
the  finest  types  of  soldierly  and  fatherly  heroism 
ever  presented  on  the  stage:  there  is  equal  force 
of  dramatic  effect,  equal  fervor  of  eloquent 
passion,  in  the  scene  of  his  pleading  before  the 
senate  on  behalf  of  the  claims  of  his  suffering  and 
struggling  fellow-soldiers,  and  in  the  scene  of  his 
return  to  the  camp  after  the  immolation  of  his 
daughter.  The  mere  theatric  effect  of  this  latter 
scene  is  at  once  so  triumphant  and  so  dignified,  so 
noble  in  its  presentation  and  so  passionate  in  its 
restraint,  that  we  feel  the  high  justice  and  sound 
reason  of  the  instinct  which  inspired  the  poet  to 
prolong  the  action  of  his  play  so  far  beyond  the 
sacrifice  of  his  heroine.  A  comparison  of  Web- 
ster's Virginius  with  any  of  Fletcher's  wordy  war- 


JOHN   WEBSTER  29 

riors  will  suffice  to  show  how  much  nearer  to 
Shakespeare  than  to  Fletcher  stands  Webster  as 
a  tragic  or  a  serious  dramatist.  Coleridge,  not 
always  just  to  Fletcher,  was  not  unjust  in  his 
remark  ' '  what  strange  self- trumpeters  and  tongue 
bullies  all  the  brave  soldiers  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  are ' ' ;  and  again  almost  immediately — 
"all  B.  and  F.'s  generals  are  pugilists,  or  cudgel- 
fighters,  that  boast  of  their  bottom  and  of  the 
'claret'  they  have  shed."  There  is  nothing  of 
this  in  Virginius;  Shakespeare  himself  has  not 
represented  with  a  more  lofty  fidelity,  in  the 
person  of  Coriolanus  or  of  Brutus,  "the  high 
Roman  fashion"  of  austere  and  heroic  self-re- 
spect. In  the  other  leading  or  dominant  figure 
of  this  tragedy  there  is  certainly  discernible  a 
genuine  and  thoughtful  originality  or  freshness 
of  conception;  but  perhaps  there  is  also  recog- 
nizable a  certain  inconsistency  of  touch.  It  was 
well  thought  of  to  mingle  some  alloy  of  good- 
ness with  the  wickedness  of  Appius  Claudius,  to 
represent  the  treacherous  and  lecherous  decemvir 
as  neither  kindless  nor  remorseless,  but  capable 
of  penitence  and  courage  in  his  last  hour.  But 
Shakespeare,  I  cannot  but  think,  would  have  pre- 
pared us  with  more  care  and  more  dexterity  for 
the  revelation  of  some  such  redeeming  quality  in 
a  character  which  in  the  act  immediately  preced- 


so  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

ing  Webster  has  represented  as  utterly  heartless 
and  shameless,  brutal  in  its  hypocrisy  and  im- 
pudent in  its  brutality. 

If  the  works  already  discussed  were  their 
author's  only  claims  to  remembrance  and  honor, 
they  might  not  suffice  to  place  him  on  a  higher 
level  among  our  tragic  poets  than  that  occupied 
by  Marston  and  Dekker  and  Middleton  on  the 
one  hand,  by  Fletcher  and  Massinger  and  Shirley 
on  the  other.  ' '  Antonio  and  Mellida, ' ' ' '  Old  Fort- 
unatus,"  or  "The  Changeling"  — "The  Maid's 
Tragedy,"  "The  Duke  of  Milan,"  or  "The 
Traitor" — would  suffice  to  counterweigh  (if  not, 
in  some  cases,  to  outbalance)  the  merit  of  the 
best  among  these :  the  fitful  and  futile  inspiration 
of  "The  Devil's  Law-case,"  and  the  stately  but 
subdued  inspiration  of  "Appius  and  Virginia." 
That  his  place  was  with  no  subordinate  poet — 
that  his  station  is  at  Shakespeare's  right  hand — 
the  evidence  supplied  by  his  two  great  tragedies 
is  disputable  by  no  one  who  has  an  inkling  of 
the  qualities  which  confer  a  right  to  be  named 
in  the  same  day  with  the  greatest  writer  of  all 
time. 

^schylus  is  above  all  things  the  poet  of  right- 
eousness. "But  in  any  wise,  I  say  unto  thee, 
revere  thou  the  altar  of  righteousness":  this  is 
the  crowning  admonition  of  his  doctrine,  as  its 


JOHN   WEBSTER  31 

crowning  prospect  is  the  reconciliation  or  atone- 
ment of  the  principle  of  retribution  with  the 
principle  of  redemption,  of  the  powers  of  the 
mystery  of  darkness  with  the  coetemal  forces  of 
the  spirit  of  wisdom,  of  the  lord  of  inspiration 
and  of  light.  The  doctrine  of  Shakespeare,  where 
it  is  not  vaguer,  is  darker  in  its  implication  of 
injustice,  in  its  acceptance  of  accident,  than  the 
impression  of  the  doctrine  of  ^Eschylus.  Fate, 
irreversible  and  inscrutable,  is  the  only  force  of 
which  we  feel  the  impact,  of  which  we  trace  the 
sign,  in  the  upshot  of  "  Othello  "  or  "  King  Lear." 
The  last  step  into  the  darkness  remained  to  be 
taken  by  "the  most  tragic"  of  all  English  poets. 
With  Shakespeare — and  assuredly  not  with  ^s- 
chylus — righteousness  itself  seems  subject  and 
subordinate  to  the  masterdom  of  fate:  but  fate 
itself,  in  the  tragic  world  of  Webster,  seems  mere- 
ly the  servant  or  the  synonyme  of  chance.  The 
two  chief  agents  in  his  two  great  tragedies  pass 
away  —  the  phrase  was,  perhaps,  unconsciously 
repeated — "in  a  mist":  perplexed,  indomitable, 
defiant  of  hope  and  fear;  bitter  and  sceptical 
and  bloody  in  penitence  or  impenitence  alike. 
And  the  mist  which  encompasses  the  departing 
spirits  of  these  moody  and  mocking  men  of 
blood  seems  equally  to  involve  the  lives  of  their 
chastisers  and  their  victims.     Blind  accident  and 


32  THE   AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

blundering  mishap — "such  a  mistake,"  says  one 
of  the  criminals,  "as  I  have  often  seen  in  a  play" 
— are  the  steersmen  of  their  fortunes  and  the 
doomsmen  of  their  deeds.  The  effect  of  this 
method  or  the  result  of  this  view,  whether  adopt- 
ed for  dramatic  objects  or  ingrained  in  the 
writer's  temperament,  is  equally  fit  for  pure 
tragedy  and  unfit  for  any  form  of  drama  not 
purely  tragic  in  evolution  and  event.  In  "The 
Devil's  Law-case"  it  is  offensive,  because  the 
upshot  is  incongruous  and  insufficient:  in  "The 
White  Devil"  and  "The  Duchess  of  Malfy"  it  is 
admirable,  because  the  results  are  adequate  and 
coherent.  But  in  all  these  three  plays  alike, 
and  in  these  three  plays  only,  the  peculiar  tone 
of  Webster's  genius,  the  peculiar  force  of  his 
imagination,  is  distinct  and  absolute  in  its  ful- 
ness of  effect.  The  author  of  "  Appius  and  Vir- 
ginia" would  have  earned  an  honorable  and  en- 
during place  in  the  history  of  English  letters  as 
a  worthy  member — one  among  many — of  a  great 
school  in  poetry,  a  deserving  representative  of  a 
great  epoch  in  literature :  but  the  author  of  these 
three  plays  has  a  solitary  station,  an  indisputable 
distinction  of  his  own.  The  greatest  poets  of  all 
time  are  not  more  mutually  independent  than 
this  one — a  lesser  poet  only  than  those  greatest 
— is  essentially  independent  of  them  all. 


JOHN   WEBSTER  33 

The  first  quality  which  all  readers  recognize, 
and  which  may  strike  a  superficial  reader  as  the 
exclusive  or  excessive  note  of  his  genius  and  his 
work,  is  of  course  his  command  of  terror.  Except 
in  yEschylus,  in  Dante,  and  in  Shakespeare,  I  at 
least  know  not  where  to  seek  for  passages  which 
in  sheer  force  of  tragic  and  noble  horror — to  the 
vulgar  shock  of  ignoble  or  brutal  horror  he  never 
condescends  to  submit  his  reader  or  subdue  his 
inspiration  —  may  be  set  against  the  subtlest, 
the  deepest,  the  sublimest  passages  of  Webster. 
Other  gifts  he  had  as  great  in  themselves,  as 
precious  and  as  necessary  to  the  poet:  but  on 
this  side  he  is  incomparable  and  unique.  Neither 
Marlowe  nor  Shakespeare  had  so  fine,  so  accu- 
rate, so  infallible  a  sense  of  the  delicate  line  of  de- 
marcation which  divides  the  impressive  and  the 
terrible  from  the  horrible  and  the  loathsome — 
Victor  Hugo  and  Honore  de  Balzac  from  Eugene 
Sue  and  Emile  Zola.  On  his  theatre  we  find  no 
presentation  of  old  men  with  their  beards  torn 
off  and  their  eyes  gouged  out,  of  young  men  im- 
prisoned in  reeking  cesspools  and  impaled  with 
red-hot  spits.  Again  and  again  his  passionate 
and  daring  genius  attains  the  utmost  limit  and 
rounds  the  final  goal  of  tragedy ;  never  once  does 
it  break  the  bounds  of  pure  poetic  instinct.  If 
ever  for  a  moment  it  may  seem  to  graze  that  goal 


34  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

too  closely,  to  brush  too  sharply  by  those  bounds, 
the  very  next  moment  finds  it  clear  of  any  such 
risk  and  remote  from  any  such  temptation  as 
sometimes  entrapped  or  seduced  the  foremost 
of  its  forerunners  in  the  field.  And  yet  this  is 
the  field  in  which  its  paces  are  most  superbly 
shown.  No  name  among  all  the  names  of  great 
poets  will  recur  so  soon  as  Webster's  to  the  reader 
who  knows  what  it  signifies,  as  he  reads  or  re- 
peats the  verses  in  which  a  greater  than  this 
great  poet  —  a  greater  than  all  since  Shakes- 
peare— has  expressed  the  latent  mystery  of  ter- 
ror which  lurks  in  all  the  highest  poetry  or 
beauty,  and  distinguishes  it  inexplicably  and 
inevitably  from  all  that  is  but  a  little  lower  than 
the  highest. 

Les  aigles  sur  les  bords  du  Gange  et  du  Caystre 

Sont  effrayants; 
Rien  de  grand  qui  ne  soit  confus6ment  sinistre; 

Les  noirs  pasans, 

Les  psaumes,  la  chanson  monstrueuse  du  mage 

Ez^chiel, 
Font  devant  notre  oeil  fixe  errer  la  vague  image 

D'un  affreux  ciel. 

L'empyr6e  est  I'abime,  on  y  plonge,  on  y  reste 

Avec  terreur. 
Car  planer,  c'est  trembler;  si  I'azur  est  celeste, 

C'est  par  I'horreur. 


JOHN   WEBSTER  35 

L'^pouvante  est  au  fond  des  choses  les  plus  belles ; 

Les  bleus  vallons 
Font  parfois  reculer  d'effroi  les  fauves  ailes 

Des  aquilons. 

And  even  in  comedy  as  in  tragedy,  in  prosaic 
even  as  in  prophetic  inspiration,  in  imitative  as  in 
imaginative  works  of  genius,  the  sovereign  of 
modem  poets  has  detected  the  same  touch  of 
terror  wherever  the  deepest  note  possible  has 
been  struck,  the  fullest  sense  possible  of  genuine 
and  peculiar  power  conveyed  to  the  student  of 
lyric  or  dramatic,  epic  or  elegiac  masters. 

De  la  tant  de  beautes  difformes  dans  leurs  oeuvres ; 

Le  vers  charmant 
Est  par  la  torsion  subite  des  cotileuvres 

Pris  brusquement ; 

A  de  certains  moments  toutes  les  jeunes  Acres 

Dans  la  fordt 
Ont  peur,  et  sur  le  front  des  blanches  metaphores 

L'ombre  apparait; 

Cast  qu' Horace  ou  Virgile  ont  vu  soudain  le  spectre 

Noir  se  dresser; 
C'est  que  la-bas,  derriere  Amaryllis,  Electro 

Vient  de  passer. 

Nor  was  it  the  Electra  of  Sophocles,  the  calm 
and  impassive  accomplice  of  an  untroubled  and 
unhesitating  matricide,  who  showed  herself  ever 


36  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

in  passing  to  the  intent  and  serious  vision  of 
Webster.  By  those  candid  and  sensible  judges 
to  whom  the  praise  of  Marlowe  seems  to  imply  a 
reflection  on  the  fame  of  Shakespeare,  I  may  be 
accused — and  by  such  critics  I  am  content  to 
be  accused — of  a  fatuous  design  to  set  Webster 
beside  Sophocles,  or  Sophocles  —  for  aught  I 
know — beneath  Webster,  if  I  venture  to  indicate 
the  superiority  in  truth  of  natural  passion — and, 
I  must  add,  of  moral  instinct — which  distin- 
guishes the  modem  from  the  ancient.  It  is  not, 
it  never  will  be,  and  it  never  can  have  been 
natural  for  noble  and  civilized  creatures  to  ac- 
cept with  spontaneous  complacency,  to  discharge 
with  unforced  equanimity,  such  offices  or  such 
duties  as  weigh  so  lightly  on  the  spirit  of  the 
Sophoclean  Orestes  that  the  slaughter  of  a 
mother  seems  to  be  a  less  serious  undertaking  for 
his  unreluctant  hand  than  the  subsequent  execu- 
tion of  her  paramour.  The  immeasurable  supe- 
riority of  .^schylus  to  his  successors  in  this 
quality  of  instinctive  righteousness — if  a  word 
long  vulgarized  by  theology  may  yet  be  used  in 
its  just  and  natural  sense — is  shared  no  less  by 
Webster  than  by  Shakespeare.  The  grave  and 
deep  truth  of  natural  impulse  is  never  ignored 
by  these  poets  when  dealing  either  with  innocent 
or  with  criminal  passion :  but  it  surely  is  now  and 


JOHN    WEBSTER  37 

then  ignored  by  the  artistic  quietism  of  Sophocles 
— as  surely  as  it  is  outraged  and  degraded  by 
the  vulgar  theatricalities  of  Euripides.  Thomas 
Campbell  was  amused  and  scandalized  by  the 
fact  that  Webster  (as  he  is  pleased  to  express  it) 
modestly  compares  himself  to  the  playwright 
last  mentioned ;  being  apparently  of  opinion  that 
"Hippolytus"  and  "Medea"  may  be  reckoned 
equal  or  superior,  as  works  of  tragic  art  or  ex- 
amples of  ethical  elevation,  to  "The  White 
Devil"  and  "The  Duchess  of  Malfy";  and  being 
no  less  apparently  ignorant,  and  incapable  of 
understanding,  that  as  there  is  no  poet  morally 
nobler  than  Webster  so  is  there  no  poet  igno- 
bler  in  the  moral  sense  than  Euripides:  while 
as  a  dramatic  artist — an  artist  in  character,  ac- 
tion, and  emotion — the  degenerate  tragedian  of 
Athens,  compared  to  the  second  tragic  dramatist 
of  England,  is  as  a  mutilated  monkey  to  a  well- 
made  man.  No  better  test  of  critical  faculty 
could  be  required  by  the  most  exacting  scrutiny 
of  probation  than  is  afforded  by  the  critic's  pro- 
fessed or  professional  estimate  of  those  great  poets 
whose  names  are  not  consecrated — or  desecrated 
— by  the  conventional  applause,  the  factitious 
adoration,  of  a  tribunal  whose  judgments  are 
dictated  by  obsequious  superstition  and  unani- 
mous incompetence.    When  certain  critics  inform 


38  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

a  listening  world  that  they  do  not  admire  Mar- 
lowe and  Webster — they  admire  Shakespeare  and 
Milton,  we  know  at  once  that  it  is  not  the  genius 
of  Shakespeare — it  is  the  reputation  of  Shake- 
speare that  they  admire.  It  is  not  the  man  that 
they  bow  down  to :  it  is  the  bust  that  they  crouch 
down  before.  They  would  worship  Shirley  as 
soon  as  Shakespeare — Glover  as  soon  as  Milton — 
Byron  as  soon  as  Shelley — Ponsard  as  soon  as 
Hugo — Longfellow  as  soon  as  Tennyson — if  the 
tablet  were  as  showily  emblazoned,  the  inscrip- 
tion as  pretentiously  engraved. 

The  nobility  of  spirit  and  motive  which  is  so 
distinguishing  a  mark  of  Webster's  instinctive 
genius  or  natural  disposition  of  mind  is  proved  by 
his  treatment  of  facts  placed  on  record  by  con- 
temporary annalists  in  the  tragic  story  of  Vittoria 
Accoramboni,  Duchess  of  Bracciano.  That  story 
would  have  been  suggestive,  if  not  tempting,  to 
any  dramatic  poet:  and  almost  any  poet  but 
Shakespeare  or  Webster  would  have  been  con- 
tent to  accept  the  characters  and  circumstances 
as  they  stood  nakedly  on  record,  and  adapt  them 
to  the  contemporary  stage  of  England  with  such 
dexterity  and  intelligence  as  he  might  be  able  to 
command.  But,  as  Shakespeare  took  the  savage 
legend  of  Hamlet,  the  brutal  story  of  Othello, 
and  raised  them  from  the  respective  levels  of  the 


JOHN    WEBSTER  39 

Heimskringla  and  the  Newgate  Calendar  to  the 
very  highest  "heaven  of  invention,"  so  has  Web- 
ster transmuted  the  impressive  but  repulsive 
record  of  villanies  and  atrocities,  in  which  he  dis- 
covered the  motive  for  a  magnificent  poem,  into 
the  majestic  and  pathetic  masterpiece  which  is 
one  of  the  most  triumphant  and  the  most  mem- 
orable achievements  of  English  poetry.  If,  in 
his  play,  as  in  the  legal  or  historic  account  of  the 
affair,  the  whole  family  of  the  heroine  had  appear- 
ed unanimous  and  eager  in  complicity  with  her 
sins  and  competition  for  a  share  in  the  profits 
of  her  dishonor,  the  tragedy  might  still  have  been 
as  effective  as  it  is  now  from  the  theatrical  or 
sensational  point  of  view;  it  might  have  thrilled 
the  reader's  nerves  as  keenly,  have  excited  and 
stimulated  his  curiosity,  have  whetted  and 
satiated  his  appetite  for  transient  emotion,  as 
thoroughly  and  triumphantly  as  now.  But  it 
would  have  been  merely  a  criminal  melodrama, 
compiled  by  the  labor  and  vivified  by  the  tal- 
ent of  an  able  theatrical  journeyman.  The  one 
great  follower  of  Shakespeare — "haud  passibus 
aequis"  at  all  points;  "longo  sed  proximus  inter- 
vallo" — ^has  recognized,  with  Shakespearean  ac- 
curacy and  delicacy  and  elevation  of  instinct, 
the  necessity  of  ennobling  and  transfiguring  his 
characters  if  their  story  was  to  be  made  accept- 


40  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

able  to  the  sympathies  of  any  but  an  idle  or  an 
ignoble  audience.  And  he  has  done  so  after  the 
very  manner  and  in  the  very  spirit  of  Shakespeare. 
The  noble  creatures  of  his  invention  give  to  the 
story  that  dignity  and  variety  of  interest  without 
which  the  most  powerful  romance  or  drama  can 
be  but  an  example  of  vigorous  vulgarity.  The 
upright  and  high-minded  mother  and  brother  of 
the  shameless  Flamineo  and  the  shame-stricken 
Vittoria  refresh  and  purify  the  tragic  atmosphere 
of  the  poem  by  the  passing  presence  of  their 
virtues.  The  shallow  and  fiery  nature  of  the 
fair  White  Devil  herself  is  a  notable  example  of 
the  difference  so  accurately  distinguished  by 
Charlotte  Bronte  between  an  impressionable  and 
an  impressible  character.  Ambition,  self-inter- 
est, passion,  remorse,  and  hardihood  alternate 
and  contend  in  her  impetuous  and  wayward 
spirit.  The  one  distinct  and  trustworthy  quality 
which  may  always  be  reckoned  on  is  the  in- 
domitable courage  underlying  her  easily  irritable 
emotions.  Her  bearing  at  the  trial  for  her  hus- 
band's murder  is  as  dexterous  and  dauntless  as 
the  demeanor  of  Mary  Stuart  before  her  judges. 
To  Charles  Lamb  it  seemed  "an  innocence-re- 
sembling boldness";  to  Mr.  Dyce  and  Canon 
Kingsley  the  innocence  displayed  in  Lamb's 
estimate  seemed  almost  ludicrous  in  its  miscon- 


JOHN    WEBSTER  41 

ception  of  Webster's  text.  I  should  hesitate  to 
agree  with  them  that  he  has  never  once  made  his 
accused  heroine  speak  in  the  natural  key  of  in- 
nocence unjustly  impeached:  Mary's  pleading  for 
her  life  is  not  at  all  points  incompatible  in  tone 
with  the  innocence  which  it  certainly  fails  to  es- 
tablish— except  in  minds  already  made  up  to 
accept  any  plea  as  valid  which  may  plausibly  or 
possibly  be  advanced  on  her  behalf ;  and  the  argu- 
ments advanced  by  Vittoria  are  not  more  evasive 
and  equivocal,  in  face  of  the  patent  and  flagrant 
prepossession  of  her  judges,  than  those  put  for- 
ward by  the  Queen  of  Scots.  It  is  impossible 
not  to  wonder  whether  the  poet  had  not  in  his 
mind  the  actual  tragedy  which  had  taken  place 
just  twenty-five  years  before  the  publication  of 
this  play:  if  not,  the  coincidence  is  something 
more  than  singular.  The  fierce  profligacy  and 
savage  egotism  of  Brachiano  have  a  certain 
energy  and  activity  in  the  display  and  the  de- 
velopment of  their  motives  and  effects  which  sug- 
gest rather  such  a  character  as  Bothwell's  than 
such  a  character  as  that  of  the  bloated  and  stolid 
sensualist  who  stands  or  grovels  before  us  in  the 
historic  record  of  his  life.  As  presented  by  Web- 
ster, he  is  doubtless  an  execrable  ruffian:  as  pre- 
sented by  history,  he  would  be  intolerable  by  any 
but  such  readers  or  spectators  as  those  on  whom 


42  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

the  figments  or  the  photographs  of  self-styled 
naturalism  produce  other  than  emetic  emotions. 
Here  again  the  noble  instinct  of  the  English  poet 
has  rectified  the  aesthetic  unseemliness  of  an 
ignoble  reality.  This  "  Brachiano"  is  a  far  more 
living  figure  than  the  porcine  paramour  of  the 
historic  Accoramboni.  I  am  not  prepared  to 
maintain  that  in  one  scene  too  much  has  not  been 
sacrificed  to  immediate  vehemence  of  effect.  The 
devotion  of  the  discarded  wife,  who  to  shelter  her 
Antony  from  the  vengeance  of  Octavius  assumes 
the  mask  of  raging  jealousy,  thus  taking  upon 
herself  the  blame  and  responsibility  of  their  final 
separation,  is  expressed  with  such  consummate 
and  artistic  simplicity  of  power  that  on  a  first 
reading  the  genius  of  the  dramatist  may  well 
blind  us  to  the  violent  unlikelihood  of  the  action. 
But  this  very  extravagance  of  self-sacrifice  may 
be  thought  by  some  to  add  a  crowning  touch  of 
pathos  to  the  unsurpassable  beauty  of  the  scene 
in  which  her  child,  after  the  murder  of  his  moth- 
er, relates  her  past  sufferings  to  his  uncle.  Those 
to  whom  the  great  name  of  Webster  represents 
merely  an  artist  in  horrors,  a  ruffian  of  genius, 
may  be  recommended  to  study  every  line  and 
syllable  of  this  brief  dialogue  : 

Francisco.  How   now,  my  noble   cousin?    what,   in 
black  ? 


JOHN   WEBSTER  43 

Giovanni.  Yes,  uncle,  I  was  taught  to  imitate  you 
In  virtue,  and  you  [?  now]  must  imitate  me 
In  colors  of  your  garments.     My  sweet  mother 
Is— 

Francisco.  How!  where? 

Giovanni.  Is  there;    no,  yonder:  indeed,  sir,  I'll  not 
tell  you. 
For  I  shall  make  you  weep. 

Francisco.  Is  dead? 

Giovanni.  Do  not  blame  me  now, 

I  did  not  tell  you  so. 

Lodovico.  She's  dead,  my  lord. 

Francisco.  Dead! 

Monticelso.  Blest  lady,  thou  art  now  above 

thy  woes! 

Giovanni.   What   do  the  dead   do,   uncle  ?   do   they 
eat, 
Hear  music,  go  a-hunting,  and  be  merry, 
As  we  that  live? 

Francisco,  No,  coz;  they  sleep. 

Giovanni.  Lord,  Lord,  that  I  were  dead! 

I   have  not  slept  these  six  nights.  —  When   do  they 
wake? 

Francisco.  When  God  shall  please. 

Giovanni.  Good  God,  let  her  sleep  ever! 

For  I  have  known  her  wake  an  hundred  nights 
When  all  the  pillow  where  she  laid  her  head 
Was  brine-wet  with  her  tears.     I  am  to  complain  to 

you,  sir; 
I'll  tell  you  how  they  have  used  her  now  she's  dead: 
They  wrapped  her  in  a  cruel  fold  of  lead, 
And  would  not  let  me  kiss  her. 

Francisco.  Thou  didst  love  her. 

Giovanni.  I  have  often  heard  her  say  she  gave  me 
suck, 


44  THE    AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

And  it  should  seem  by  that  she  dearly  loved  me, 
Since  princes  seldom  do  it. 

Francisco.  O,  all  of  my  poor  sister  that  remains! — 
Take  him  away,  for  God's  sake! 

I  must  admit  that  I  do  not  see  how  Shake- 
speare could  have  improved  upon  that.  It 
seems  to  me  that  in  any  one  of  even  his  greatest 
tragedies  this  scene  would  have  been  remarkable 
among  its  most  beautiful  and  perfect  passages; 
nor,  upon  the  whole,  do  I  remember  a  third 
English  poet  who  could  be  imagined  capable  of 
having  written  it.  And  it  affords,  I  think,  very 
clear  and  sufficient  evidence  that  Webster  could 
not  have  handled  so  pathetic  and  suggestive  a 
subject  as  the  execution  of  Lady  Jane  Grey  and 
her  young  husband  in  a  style  so  thin  and  feeble, 
so  shallow  in  expression  of  pathos  and  so  empty 
of  suggestion  or  of  passion,  as  that  in  which  it  is 
presented  at  the  close  of  "Sir  Thomas  Wyatt." 

There  is  a  perfect  harmony  of  contrast  between 
this  and  the  death  scene  of  the  boy's  father:  the 
agony  of  the  murdered  murderer  is  as  superb  in 
effect  of  terror  as  the  sorrow  of  his  son  is  exquisite 
in  effect  of  pathos.  Again  we  are  reminded  of 
Shakespeare,  by  no  touch  of  imitation  but  simply 
by  a  note  of  kinship  in  genius  and  in  style,  at  the 
cry  of  Brachiano  under  the  first  sharp  workings 
of  the  poison: 


JOHN   WEBSTER  45 

O  thou  strong  heart! 
There's  such  a  covenant  'tween  the  world  and  it, 
They're  loath  to  break. 


Another  stroke  well  worthy  of  Shakespeare  is  the 
redeeming  touch  of  grace  in  this  brutal  and  cold- 
blooded ruffian  which  gives  him  in  his  agony  a 
thought  of  tender  care  for  the  accomplice  of  his 
atrocities : 

Do  not  kiss  me,  for  I  shall  poison  thee. 

Few  instances  of  Webster's  genius  are  so  well 
known  as  the  brief  but  magnificent  passage  which 
follows;  yet  it  may  not  be  impertinent  to  cite  it 
once  again: 

Brachiano.  O  thou  soft  natural  death,  that  art  joint 
twin 
To  sweetest  slumber!    no  rough-bearded  comet 
Stares  on  thy  mild  departure;  the  dull  owl 
Beats  not  against  thy  casement;  the  hoarse  wolf 
Scents  not  thy  carrion;   pity  winds  thy  corpse, 
Whilst  horror  waits  on  princes. 

Vittoria.  I  am  lost  forever. 

Brachiano.  How  miserable  a  thing  it  is  to  die 
'Mongst  women  howling! — What  are  those? 

Flamineo.  Franciscans: 

They  have  brought  the  extreme  unction. 

Brachiano.  On  pain  of  death,  let  no  man  name  death 
to  me; 
It  is  a  word  [?  most]  infinitely  terrible. 


4$  THE    AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

The  very  tremor  of  moral  and  physical  abjection 
from  nervous  defiance  into  prostrate  fear  which 
seems  to  pant  and  bluster  and  quail  and  subside 
in  the  natural  cadence  of  these  lines  would  suffice 
to  prove  the  greatness  of  the  artist  who  could 
express  it  with  such  terrible  perfection :  but  when 
we  compare  it,  by  collation  of  the  two  scenes,  with 
the  deep  simplicity  of  tenderness,  the  child-like 
accuracy  of  innocent  emotion,  in  the  passage  pre- 
viously cited,  it  seems  to  me  that  we  must  admit, 
as  an  unquestionable  truth,  that  in  the  deepest 
and  highest  and  purest  qualities  of  tragic  poetry 
Webster  stands  nearer  to  Shakespeare  than  any 
other  English  poet  stands  to  Webster;  and  so 
much  nearer  as  to  be  a  good  second;  while  it  is 
at  least  questionable  whether  even  Shelley  can 
reasonably  be  accepted  as  a  good  third.  Not  one 
among  the  predecessors,  contemporaries,  or  suc- 
cessors of  Shakespeare  and  Webster  has  given 
proof  of  this  double  faculty — this  coequal  mastery 
of  terror  and  pity,  undiscolored  and  undistorted, 
but  vivified  and  glorified,  by  the  splendor  of  im- 
mediate and  infallible  imagination.  The  most 
grovelling  realism  could  scarcely  be  so  impudent 
in  stupidity  as  to  pretend  an  aim  at  more  perfect 
presentation  of  truth :  the  most  fervent  fancy,  the 
most  sensitive  taste,  could  hardly  dream  of  a 
desire  for  more  exquisite  expression  of  natural 


JOHN    WEBSTER  47 

passion  in  a  form  of  utterance  more  naturally- 
exalted  and  refined. 

In  all  the  vast  and  voluminous  records  of  crit- 
ical error  there  can  be  discovered  no  falsehood 
more  foolish  or  more  flagrant  than  the  vulgar 
tradition  which  represents  this  high-souled  and 
gentle-hearted  poet  as  one  morbidly  fascinated 
by  a  fantastic  attraction  toward  the  "violent 
delights  "  of  horror  and  the  nervous  or  sensational 
excitements  of  criminal  detail ;  nor  can  there  be 
conceived  a  more  perverse  or  futile  misappre- 
hension than  that  which  represents  John  Webster 
as  one  whose  instinct  led  him  by  some  obscure 
and  oblique  propensity  to  darken  the  darkness  of 
southern  crime  or  vice  by  an  infusion  of  northern 
seriousness,  of  introspective  cynicism  and  re- 
flective intensity  in  wrong-doing,  into  the  easy 
levity  and  infantile  simplicity  of  spontaneous 
■wickedness  which  distinguished  the  moral  and  so- 
cial corruption  of  renascent  Italy.  Proof  enough 
of  this  has  already  been  adduced  to  make  any 
protestation  or  appeal  against  such  an  esti- 
mate as  preposterous  in  its  superfluity  as  the 
misconception  just  mentioned  is  preposterous  in 
its  perversity.  The  great  if  not  incomparable 
power  displayed  in  Webster's  delineation  of  such 
criminals  as  Flamineo  and  Bosola — Bonapartes 
in  the  bud,  Napoleons  in  a  nutshell,  Caesars  who 


48  THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

have  missed  their  Rubicon  and  collapse  into  the 
likeness  of  a  Catiline — is  a  sign  rather  of  his  noble 
English  loathing  for  the  traditions  associated 
with  such  names  as  Caesar  and  Medici  and  Bor- 
gia, Catiline  and  Iscariot  and  Napoleon,  than  of 
any  sympathetic  interest  in  such  incarnations  of 
historic  crime.  Flamineo  especially,  the  ardent 
pimp,  the  enthusiastic  pandar,  who  prostitutes 
his  sister  and  assassinates  his  brother  with  such 
earnest  and  single-hearted  devotion  to  his  own 
straightforward  self-interest,  has  in  him  a  sublime 
fervor  of  rascality  which  recalls  rather  the  man 
of  Brumaire  and  of  Waterloo  than  the  man  of 
December  and  of  Sedan.  He  has  something  too 
of  Napoleon's  ruffianly  good-humor — the  frank- 
ness of  a  thieves'  kitchen  or  an  imperial  court, 
when  the  last  thin  fig-leaf  of  pretence  has  been 
plucked  off  and  crumpled  up  and  flung  away. 
We  can  imagine  him  pinching  his  favorites  by 
the  ear  and  dictating  memorials  of  mendacity 
with  the  self-possession  of  a  self-made  monarch. 
As  it  is,  we  see  him  only  in  the  stage  of  parasite 
and  pimp — more  like  the  hired  husband  of  a  cast- 
off  Creole  than  the  resplendent  rogue  who  fas- 
cinated even  history  for  a  time  by  the  clamor 
and  glitter  of  his  triumphs.  But  the  fellow  is  un- 
mistakably an  emperor  in  the  egg — so  dauntless 
and  frontless  in  the  very  abjection  of  his  villany 


JOHN    WEBSTER  49 

that  we  feel  him  to  have  been  defrauded  by  mis- 
chance of  the  only  two  destinations  appropriate 
for  the  close  of  his  career — a  gibbet  or  a  throne. 
This  imperial  quality  of  ultimate  perfection  in 
egotism  and  crowning  complacency  in  crime  is 
wanting  to  his  brother  in  atrocity,  the  most  nota- 
ble villain  who  figures  on  the  stage  of  Webster's 
latest  masterpiece.  Bosola  is  not  quite  a  possi- 
ble Bonaparte ;  he  is  not  even  on  a  level  with  the 
bloody  hirelings  who  execute  the  orders  of  tyr- 
anny and  treason  with  the  perfunctory  atrocity 
of  Anicetus  or  Saint-Amaud.  There  is  not,  or  I 
am  much  mistaken,  a  touch  of  imaginative  poetry 
in  the  part  of  Flamineo:  his  passion,  excitable  on 
occasion  and  vehement  enough,  is  as  prosaic  in  its 
homely  and  cynical  eloquence  as  the  most  fervent 
emotions  of  a  Napoleon  or  an  lago  when  warmed 
or  goaded  into  elocution.  The  one  is  a  human 
snake,  the  other  is  a  human  wolf.  Webster  could 
not  with  equal  propriety  have  put  into  the  mouth 
of  Flamineo  such  magnificent  lyric  poetry  as 
seems  to  fall  naturally,  however  suddenly  and 
strangely,  from  the  bitter  and  blood-thirsty 
tongue  of  Bosola.  To  him,  as  to  the  baffled  and 
incoherent  ruffian  Romelio  in  the  contemporary 
play  of  "The  Devil's  Law-case,"  his  creator  has 
assigned  the  utterance  of  such  verse  as  can  only 
be  compared  to  that  uttered  by  Cornelia  over 


50  THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

the  body  of  her  murdered  son  in  the  tragedy  to 
which  I  have  just  given  so  feeble  and  inadequate 
a  word  of  tribute.  In  his  command  and  in 
his  use  of  the  metre  first  made  fashionable  by 
the  graceful  improvisations  of  Greene,  Webster 
seems  to  me  as  original  and  as  peculiar  as  in  his 
grasp  and  manipulation  of  character  and  event. 
All  other  poets,  Shakespeare  no  less  than  Barn- 
field  and  Milton  no  less  than  Wither,  have  used 
this  lyric  instrument  for  none  but  gentle  or 
gracious  ends:  Webster  has  breathed  into  it  the 
power  to  express  a  sublimer  and  a  profounder 
tone  of  emotion ;  he  has  given  it  the  cadence  and 
the  color  of  tragedy;  he  has  touched  and  trans- 
figured its  note  of  meditative  music  into  a  chord 
of  passionate  austerity  and  prophetic  awe.  This 
was  the  key  in  which  all  previous  poets  had 
played  upon  the  metre  which  Webster  was  to  put 
to  so  deeply  different  an  use : 

Walking  in  a  valley  greene, 
Spred  with  Flora  summer  queene: 
Where  shee  heaping  all  hir  graces, 
Niggard  seem'd  in  other  places: 
Spring  it  was,  and  here  did  spring 
All  that  nature  forth  can  bring. 

{Tullics  Louc,  p.  53,  ed.  1589.) 

Nights  were  short,  and  daies  were  long; 
Blossoms  on  the  Hauthorns  hung: 


JOHN    WEBSTER  51 

Philomele  (Night-Musiques  King) 
Tolde  the  comming  of  the  spring. 

{Grosart's  Barnfield  [1876],  p.  97.) 

On  a  day  (alack  the  day!) 
Love,  whose  month  is  ever  May, 
Spied  a  blossom  passing  fair 
Playing  in  the  wanton  air. 

{Love's  Labor's  Lost,  act  iv.,  so.  iii.) 

And  now  let  us  hear  Webster. 

Hearke,  now  every  thing  is  still, 
The  Scritch-Owle,  and  the  whistler  shrill, 
Call  upon  our  Dame,  aloud, 
And  bid  her  quickly  don  her  shrowd: 
Much  you  had  of  Land  and  rent. 
Your  length  in  clay  's  now  competent. 
A  long  war  disturb'd  your  minde. 
Here  your  perfect  peace  is  sign'd. 
Of  what  is  't,  fooles  make  such  vaine  keeping  ? 
Sin  their  conception,  their  birth,  weeping: 
Their  life,  a  generall  mist  of  error, 
Their  death,  a  hideous  storme  of  terror. 
Strew  your  haire  with  powders  sweete: 
Don  cleane  linnen,  bath[e]  your  feete, 
And  (the  foiole  feend  more  to  checke) 
A  crucifixe  let  blesse  your  necke: 
'Tis  now  full  tide  'tweene  night  and  day, 
End  your  groane,  and  come  away. 
(The   Tragedy  of  the  Dutchesse  of  Malfy:    1623:   sig. 
K,  K  2.) 

The  toll  of  the  funereal  rhythm,  the  heavy 
chime  of  the  solemn  and  simple  verse,  the  mourn- 


52  THE   AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

ful  menace  and  the  brooding  presage  of  its  note, 
are  but  the  covering,  as  it  were,  or  the  outer 
expression,  of  the  tragic  significance  which  deep- 
ens and  quickens  and  kindles  to  its  close, 
-^schylus  and  Dante  have  never  excelled,  nor 
perhaps  have  Sophocles  and  Shakespeare  ever 
equalled  in  impression  of  terrible  effect,  the  fancy 
of  bidding  a  live  woman  array  herself  in  the  rai- 
ment of  the  grave,  and  do  for  her  own  living  body 
the  offices  done  for  a  corpse  by  the  ministers  at- 
tendant on  the  dead. 

The  murderous  humorist  whose  cynical  in- 
spiration gives  life  to  these  deadly  lines  is  at  first 
sight  a  less  plausible,  but  on  second  thoughts  may 
perhaps  seem  no  less  possible  a  character  than 
Flamineo.  Pure  and  simple  ambition  of  the 
Napoleonic  order  is  the  motive  which  impels  into 
infamy  the  aspiring  parasite  of  Brachiano:  a 
savage  melancholy  inflames  the  baffled  greed  of 
Bosola  to  a  pitch  of  wickedness  not  unqualified 
by  relenting  touches  of  profitless  remorse,  which 
come  always  either  too  early  or  too  late  to  bear 
any  serviceable  fruit  of  compassion  or  redemp- 
tion. There  is  no  deeper  or  more  Shakespearean 
stroke  of  tragic  humor  in  all  Webster's  writings 
than  that  conveyed  in  the  scornful  and  acute 
reply — almost  too  acute  perhaps  for  the  character 
— of  Bosola's  remorseless  patron  to  the  remon- 


JOHN   WEBSTER  53 

strance  or  appeal  of  his  instrument  against  the 
insatiable  excess  and  persistence  of  his  cruelty: 
"Thy  pity  is  nothing  akin  to  thee."  He  has 
more  in  common  with  Romelio  in  "The  Devil's 
Law-case,"  an  assassin  who  misses  his  aim  and 
flounders  into  penitence  much  as  that  discom- 
fortable  drama  misses  its  point  and  stumbles  into 
vacuity:  and  whose  unsatisfactory  figure  looks 
either  like  a  crude  and  unsuccessful  study  for 
that  of  Bosola,  or  a  disproportioned  and  emas- 
culated copy  from  it.  But  to  him  too  Webster 
has  given  the  fitful  force  of  fancy  or  inspiration 
which  finds  expression  in  such  sudden  snatches 
of  funereal  verse  as  this: 

How  then  can  any  monument  say 

"  Here  rest  these  bones  till  the  last  day," 

When  Time,  swift  both  of  foot  and  feather. 

May  bear  them  the  sexton  kens  not  whither? 

What  care  I,  then,  though  my  last  sleep 

Be  in  the  desert  or  the  deep, 

No  lamp  nor  taper,  day  and  night, 

To  give  my  charnel  chargeable  light? 

I  have  there  like  quantity  of  ground. 

And  at  the  last  day  I  shall  be  found. 

The  villanous  laxity  of  versification  which  de- 
forms the  grim  and  sardonic  beauty  of  these  oc- 
casionally rough  and  halting  lines  is  perceptible 
here  and  there  in  "The  Duchess  of  Malfy,"  but 
comes  to  its  head  in  "The  Devil's  Law^-case."   It 


54  THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

cannot,  I  fear,  be  denied  that  Webster  was  the 
first  to  relax  those  natural  bonds  of  noble  metre 
"whose  service  is  perfect  freedom" — as  Shake- 
speare found  it,  and  combined  with  perfect 
loyalty  to  its  law  the  most  perfect  liberty  of 
living  and  sublime  and  spontaneous  and  accu- 
rate expression.  I  can  only  conjecture  that  this 
greatest  of  the  Shakespeareans  was  misguided 
out  of  his  natural  line  of  writing  as  exemplified 
and  perfected  in  the  tragedy  of  Vittoria,  and 
liifed  into  this  cross  and  crooked  by-way  of  im- 
metrical  experiment,  by  the  temptation  of  some 
theory  or  crotchet  on  the  score  of  what  is  now 
called  naturalism  or  realism ;  which,  if  there  were 
any  real  or  natural  weight  in  the  reasoning  that 
seeks  to  support  it,  would  of  course  do  away, 
and  of  course  ought  to  do  away,  with  dramatic 
poetry  altogether:  for  if  it  is  certain  that  real 
persons  do  not  actually  converse  in  good  metre, 
it  is  happily  no  less  certain  that  they  do  not 
actually  converse  in  bad  metre.  In  the  hands  of 
so  great  a  tragic  poet  as  Webster  a  peculiar  and 
impressive  effect  may  now  and  then  be  produced 
by  this  anomalous  and  illegitimate  way  of  writ- 
ing; it  certainly  suits  well  with  the  thoughtful 
and  fantastic  truculence  of  Bosola's  reflections  on 
death  and  dissolution  and  decay — his  "talk  fit 
for  a  chamel,"  which  halts  and  hovers  between 


JOHN   WEBSTER  55 

things  hideous  and  things  sublime.  But  it  is  a 
step  on  the  downward  way  that  leads  to  the  nega- 
tion or  the  confusion  of  all  distinctions  between 
poetry  and  prose;  a  result  to  which  it  would  be 
grievous  to  think  that  the  example  of  Shake- 
speare's greatest  contemporary  should  in  any 
way  appear  to  conduce. 

The  doctrine  or  the  motive  of  chance  (which- 
ever we  may  prefer  to  call  it)  is  seen  in  its  fullest 
workings  and  felt  in  its  furthest  bearings  by  the 
student  of  Webster's  masterpiece.  The  fifth  act 
of  "The  Duchess  of  Malfy"  has  been  assailed  on 
the  very  ground  which  it  should  have  been  evi- 
dent to  a  thoughtful  and  capable  reader  that  the 
writer  must  have  intended  to  take  up — on  the 
ground  that  the  whole  upshot  of  the  story  is 
dominated  by  sheer  chance,  arranged  by  mere 
error,  and  guided  by  pure  accident.  No  formal 
scheme  or  religious  principle  of  retribution  would 
have  been  so  strangely  or  so  thoroughly  in  keep- 
ing with  the  whole  scheme  and  principle  of  the 
tragedy.  After  the  overv\^helming  terrors  and 
the  overpowering  beauties  of  that  unique  and 
marvellous  fourth  act,  in  which  the  genius  of  this 
poet  spreads  its  fullest  and  its  darkest  w^ng  for 
the  longest  and  the  strongest  of  its  flights,  it 
could  not  but  be  that  the  subsequent  action  and 
passion  of  the  drama  should  appear  by  com- 


55  THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

parison  unimpressive  or  ineffectual;  but  all  the 
effect  or  impression  possible  of  attainment  under 
the  inevitable  burden  of  this  difficulty  is  achieved 
by  natural  and  simple  and  straightforward  means. 
If  Webster  has  not  made  the  part  of  Antonio 
dramatically  striking  and  attractive — as  he  prob- 
ably found  it  impossible  to  do — he  has  at  least 
bestowed  on  the  fugitive  and  unconscious  wid- 
ower of  his  murdered  heroine  a  pensive  and 
manly  grace  of  deliberate  resignation  which  is 
not  without  pathetic  as  well  as  poetical  effect. 
In  the  beautiful  and  well-known  scene  where  the 
echo  from  his  wife's  unknown  and  new-made 
grave  seems  to  respond  to  his  meditative  mock- 
ery and  forewarn  him  of  his  impending  death, 
Webster  has  given  such  reality  and  seriousness 
to  an  old  commonplace  of  contemporary  fancy 
or  previous  fashion  in  poetry  that  we  are  fain  to 
forget  the  fantastic  side  of  the  conception  and 
see  only  the  tragic  aspect  of  its  meaning.  A 
weightier  objection  than  any  which  can  be 
brought  against  the  conduct  of  the  play  might  be 
suggested  to  the  minds  of  some  readers — and 
these,  perhaps,  not  too  exacting  or  too  captious 
readers — by  the  sudden  vehemence  of  transforma- 
tion which  in  the  great  preceding  act  seems  to  fall 
like  fire  from  heaven  upon  the  two  chief  criminals 
who  figure  on  the  stage  of  murder.     It  seems 


JOHN    WEBSTER  57 

rather  a  miraculous  retribution,  a  judicial  viola- 
tion of  the  laws  of  nature,  than  a  reasonably- 
credible  consequence  or  evolution  of  those  laws, 
which  strikes  Ferdinand  with  madness  and  Bosola 
with  repentance.  But  the  whole  atmosphere  of 
the  action  is  so  charged  with  thunder  that  this 
double  and  simultaneous  shock  of  moral  elec- 
tricity rather  thrills  us  with  admiration  and 
faith  than  chills  us  with  repulsion  or  distrust. 
The  passionate  intensity  and  moral  ardor  of 
imagination  which  we  feel  to  vibrate  and  pene- 
trate through  every  turn  and  every  phrase  of  the 
dialogue  would  suffice  to  enforce  upon  our  belief 
a  more  nearly  incredible  revolution  of  nature  or 
revulsion  of  the  soul. 

It  is  so  difficult  for  even  the  very  greatest  poets 
to  give  any  vivid  force  of  living  interest  to  a  figure 
of  passive  endurance  that  perhaps  the  only  in- 
stance of  perfect  triumph  over  this  difficulty  is 
to  be  found  in  the  character  of  Desdemona. 
Shakespeare  alone  could  have  made  her  as  in- 
teresting as  Imogen  or  Cordelia;  though  these 
have  so  much  to  do  and  dare,  and  she  after  her 
first  appearance  has  simply  to  sufter:  even  Web- 
ster could  not  give  such  individual  vigor  of 
characteristic  life  to  the  figure  of  his  martyr  as  to 
the  figure  of  his  criminal  heroine.  Her  courage 
and  sweetness,  her  delicacy  and  sincerity,  her 


58  THE    AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

patience  and  her  passion,  are  painted  with  equal 
power  and  tenderness  of  touch:  yet  she  hardly 
stands  before  us  as  distinct  from  others  of  her 
half-angelic  sisterhood  as  does  the  White  Devil 
from  the  fellowship  of  her  comrades  in  perdition. 
But  if,  as  we  may  assuredly  assume,  it  was 
on  the  twenty- third  "nouell"  of  William  Pain- 
ter's Palace  of  Pleasure  that  Webster's  crowning 
masterpiece  was  founded,  the  poet's  moral  and 
spiritual  power  of  transfiguration  is  here  even 
more  admirable  than  in  the  previous  case  of  his 
other  and  wellnigh  coequally  consummate  poem. 
The  narrative  degrades  and  brutalizes  the  wid- 
owed heroine's  affection  for  her  second  husband 
to  the  actual  level  of  the  vile  conception  which 
the  poet  attributes  and  confines  to  the  foul  imag- 
ination of  her  envious  and  murderous  brothers. 
Here  again,  and  finally  and  supremely  here,  the 
purifying  and  exalting  power  of  Webster's  noble 
and  magnanimous  imagination  is  gloriously  un- 
mistakable by  all  and  any  who  have  eyes  to  read 
and  hearts  to  recognize. 

For  it  is  only  with  Shakespeare  that  Webster 
can  ever  be  compared  in  any  way  to  his  dis- 
advantage as  a  tragic  poet:  above  all  others  of 
his  country  he  stands  indisputably  supreme.  The 
place  of  Marlowe  indeed  is  higher  among  our 
poets  by  right  of  his  primacy  as  a  founder  and  a 


JOHN   WEBSTER  59 

pioneer:  but  of  course  his  work  has  not — as  of 
course  it  could  not  have — that  plenitude  and  per- 
fection of  dramatic  power  in  construction  and 
dramatic  subtlety  in  detail  which  the  tragedies  of 
Webster  share  in  so  large  a  measure  with  the 
tragedies  of  Shakespeare.  Marston,  the  poet  with 
whom  he  has  most  in  common,  might  almost  be 
said  to  stand  in  the  same  relation  to  Webster  as 
Webster  to  Shakespeare.  In  single  lines  and 
phrases,  in  a  few  detached  passages  and  a  very- 
few  distinguishable  scenes,  he  is  worthy  to  be  com- 
pared with  the  greater  poet;  he  suddenly  rises 
and  dilates  to  the  stature  and  the  strength  of  a 
model  whom  usually  he  can  but  follow  afar  off. 
Marston,  as  a  tragic  poet,  is  not  quite  what  Web- 
ster would  be  if  his  fame  depended  simply  on 
such  scenes  as  those  in  which  the  noble  mother 
of  Vittoria  breaks  off  her  daughter's  first  inter- 
view with  Brachiano — spares,  and  commends  to 
God's  forgiveness,  the  son  who  has  murdered  his 
brother  before  her  eyes — and  lastly  appears  "in 
several  forms  of  distraction,"  "grown  a  very  old 
woman  in  two  hours,"  and  singing  that  most 
pathetic  and  imaginative  of  all  funereal  invoca- 
tions w^hich  the  finest  critic  of  all  time  so  justly 
and  so  delicately  compared  to  the  watery  dirge  of 
Ariel.  There  is  less  refinement,  less  exaltation 
and  perfection  of  feeling,  less  tenderness  of  emo- 


6o  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

tion  and  less  nobility  of  passion,  but  hardly  less 
force  and  fervor,  less  weighty  and  sonorous  ar- 
dor of  expression,  in  the  very  best  and  loftiest 
passages  of  Marston :  but  his  genius  is  more  un- 
certain, more  fitful  and  intermittent,  less  harmo- 
nious, coherent,  and  trustworthy  than  Webster's. 
And  Webster,  notwithstanding  an  occasional  out- 
break into  Aristophanic  license  of  momentary 
sarcasm  through  the  sardonic  lips  of  such  a 
cynical  ruffian  as  Ferdinand  or  Flamineo,  is 
without  exception  the  cleanliest,  as  Marston  is 
beyond  comparison  the  coarsest  writer  of  his 
time.  In  this  as  in  other  matters  of  possible 
comparison  that  "vessel  of  deathless  wrath,"  the 
implacable  and  inconsolable  poet  of  sympathy 
half  maddened  into  rage  and  aspiration  goaded 
backward  to  despair — it  should  be  needless  to 
add  the  name  of  Cyril  Tourneur — stands  midway 
between  these  two  more  conspicuous  figures  of 
their  age.  But  neither  the  father  and  master  of 
poetic  pessimists,  the  splendid  and  sombre  cre- 
ator of  Vindice  and  his  victims,  nor  any  other 
third  whom  our  admiration  may  discern  among 
all  the  greatest  of  their  fellows,  can  be  compared 
with  Webster  on  terms  more  nearly  equal  than 
those  on  which  Webster  stands  in  relation  to  the 
sovereign  of  them  all. 


THOMAS   DEKKER 

Of  all  English  poets,  if  not  of  all  poets  on 
record,  Dekker  is  perhaps  the  most  difficult  to 
classify.  The  grace  and  delicacy,  the  sweetness 
and  spontaneity  of  his  genius  are  not  more 
obvious  and  undeniable  than  the  many  defects 
which  impair  and  the  crowning  deficiency  which 
degrades  it.  As  long,  but  so  long  only,  as  a  man 
retains  some  due  degree  of  self-respect  and  re- 
spect for  the  art  he  ser\^es  or  the  business  he 
follows,  it  matters  less  for  his  fame  in  the  future 
than  for  his  prosperity  in  the  present  whether  he 
retains  or  discards  any  vestige  of  respect  for  any 
other  obligation  in  the  world.  Francois  Villon, 
compared  with  whom  all  other  reckless  and  dis- 
reputable men  of  genius  seem  patterns  of  austere 
decency  and  elevated  regularity  of  life,  was  as 
conscientious  and  self-respectful  an  artist  as  a 
Virgil  or  a  Tennyson :  he  is  not  a  great  poet  only, 
but  one  of  the  most  blameless,  the  most  perfect, 
the  most  faultless  among  his  fellows  in  the  first 
class  of  writers  for  all  time.     If  not  in  that  class, 


62  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

yet  high  in  the  class  immediately  beneath  it, 
the  world  would  long  since  have  agreed  to  enrol 
the  name  of  Thomas  Dekker,  had  he  not  w^anted 
that  one  gift  which  next  to  genius  is  the  most 
indispensable  for  all  aspirants  to  a  station  among 
the  masters  of  creative  literature.  For  he  was 
by  nature  at  once  a  singer  and  a  maker:  he  had 
the  gift  of  native  music  and  the  birthright  of  in- 
born invention.  His  song  was  often  sweet  as 
honey ;  his  fancy  sometimes  as  rich  and  subtle,  his 
imagination  as  delicate  and  strong,  as  that  of  the 
very  greatest  among  dramatists  or  poets.  For 
gentle  grace  of  inspiration  and  vivid  force  of  real- 
ism he  is  eclipsed  at  his  very  best  by  Shake- 
speare's self  alone.  No  such  combination  or 
alternation  of  such  admirable  powers  is  discern- 
ible in  any  of  his  otherwise  more  splendid  or 
sublime  compeers.  And  in  one  gift,  the  divine 
gift  of  tenderness,  he  comes  nearer  to  Shake- 
speare and  stands  higher  above  others  than  in 
any  other  quality  of  kindred  genius. 

And  with  all  these  gifts,  if  the  vulgar  verdict 
of  his  own  day  and  of  later  days  be  not  less  valid 
than  vulgar,  he  was  a  failure.  There  is  a  pathetic 
undertone  of  patience  and  resignation  not  un- 
qualified by  manly  though  submissive  regret, 
which  recurs  now  and  then,  or  seems  to  recur,  in 
the  personal  accent  of  his  subdued  and  dignified 


THOMAS    DEKKER  63 

appeal  to  the  casual  reader,  suggestive  of  a  sense 
that  the  higher  triumphs  of  art,  the  brighter  pros- 
perities of  achievement,  were  not  reserved  for 
him ;  and  yet  not  unsuggestive  of  a  consciousness 
that,  if  this  be  so,  it  is  not  so  through  want  of  the 
primal  and  essential  qualities  of  a  poet.  For,  as 
Lamb  says,  Dekker  "had  poetry  enough  for  any- 
thing"; at  all  events,  for  anything  which  can  be 
accomplished  by  a  poet  endowed  in  the  highest 
degree  with  the  gifts  of  graceful  and  melodi- 
ouc  fancy,  tender  and  cordial  humor,  vivid  and 
pathetic  realism,  a  spontaneous  refinement  and 
an  exquisite  simplicity  of  expression.  With  the 
one  great  gift  of  seriousness,  of  noble  ambition, 
of  self-confidence  rooted  in  self-respect,  he  must 
have  won  an  indisputable  instead  of  a  question- 
able place  among  the  immortal  writers  of  his  age. 
But  this  gift  had  been  so  absolutely  withheld 
from  him  by  nature  or  withdrawn  from  him  by 
circumstance  that  he  has  left  us  not  one  single 
work  altogether  worthy  of  the  powers  now  re- 
vealed and  now  eclipsed,  now  suddenly  radiant 
and  now  utterly  extinct,  in  the  various  and 
voluminous  array  of  1  -s  writings.  Although  his 
earlier  plays  are  in  every  way  superior  to  his 
later,  there  is  evidence  even  in  the  best  of  them 
of  the  author's  infirmity  of  hand.  From  the  first 
he  shows  himself  idly  or  perversely  or  impotently 


64  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

prone  to  loosen  his  hold  on  character  and  story 
alike  before  his  plot  can  be  duly  carried  out 
or  his  conceptions  adequately  developed.  His 
"pleasant  Comedie  of  'The  Gentle  Craft,'"  first 
printed  three  years  before  the  death  of  Queen 
Elizabeth,  is  one  of  his  brightest  and  most  cohe- 
rent pieces  of  work,  graceful  and  lively  through- 
out, if  rather  thin-spun  and  slight  of  structure: 
but  the  more  serious  and  romantic  part  of  the 
action  is  more  lightly  handled  than  the  broad 
light  comedy  of  the  mad  and  merry  Lord  Mayor 
Simon  Eyre,  a  figure  in  the  main  original  and 
humorous  enough,  but  somewhat  over-persistent 
in  ostentation  and  repetition  of  jocose  catch- 
words after  the  fashion  of  mine  host  of  the 
Garter;  a  type  which  Shakespeare  knew  better 
than  to  repeat,  but  of  which  his  inferiors  seem 
to  have  been  enamoured  beyond  all  reason.  In 
this  fresh  and  pleasant  little  play  there  are  few 
or  no  signs  of  the  author's  higher  poetic  abilities : 
the  style  is  pure  and  sweet,  simple  and  spon- 
taneous, without  any  hint  of  a  quality  not  re- 
quired by  the  subject:  but  in  the  other  play  of 
Dekker's  which  bears  the  same  date  as  this  one 
his  finest  and  rarest  gifts  of  imagination  and  emo- 
tion, feeling  and  fancy,  color  and  melody,  are 
as  apparent  as  his  ingrained  faults  of  levity  and 
laziness.     The  famous  passage  in  which  Webster 


THOMAS   DEKKER  65 

couples  together  the  names  of  "  Mr.  Shakespeare, 
Mr.  Dekker,  and  Mr.  Heywood,"  seems  explicable 
when  we  compare  the  style  of  "Old  Fortunatus" 
with  the  style  of  "  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream." 
Dekker  had  as  much  of  the  peculiar  sweetness, 
the  gentle  fancy,  the  simple  melody  of  Shake- 
speare in  his  woodland  dress,  as  Heywood  of  the 
homely  and  noble  realism,  the  heartiness  and 
humor,  the  sturdy  sympathy  and  joyful  pride  of 
Shakespeare  in  his  most  English  mood  of  patri- 
otic and  historic  loyalty.  Not  that  these  quali- 
ties are  wanting  in  the  work  of  Dekker:  he  was 
an  ardent  and  a  combative  patriot,  ever  ready 
to  take  up  the  cudgels  in  prose  or  rhyme  for 
England  and  her  yeomen  against  Popery  and  the 
world :  but  it  is  rather  the  man  than  the  poet  who 
speaks  on  these  occasions:  his  singing  faculty 
does  not  apply  itself  so  naturally  to  such  work 
as  to  the  wild  wood-notes  of  passion  and  fancy 
and  pathos  which  in  his  happiest  moments,  even 
when  they  remind  us  of  Shakespeare's,  provoke 
no  sense  of  unworthiness  or  inequality  in  com- 
parison with  these.  It  is  not  with  the  most 
popular  and  famous  names  of  his  age  that  the 
sovereign  name  of  Shakespeare  is  most  properly 
or  most  profitably  to  be  compared.  His  genius 
has  really  far  less  in  common  with  that  of  Jonson 
or  of  Fletcher  than  with  that  of  Webster  or  of 


66  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

Dekker.  To  the  last-named  poet  even  Lamb 
was  for  once  less  than  just  when  he  said  of  the 
"frantic  Lover"  in  "Old  Fortunatus"  that  "he 
talks  pure  Biron  and  Romeo;  he  is  almost  as 
poetical  as  they."  The  word  "almost"  should 
be  supplanted  by  the  word  "fully";  and  the 
criticism  would  then  be  no  less  adequate  than 
apt.  Sidney  himself  might  have  applauded  the 
verses  which  clothe  with  living  music  a  passion 
as  fervent  and  as  fiery  a  fancy  as  his  own.  Not 
even  in  the  rapturous  melodies  of  that  matchless 
series  of  songs  and  sonnets  which  glorify  the  in- 
separable names  of  Astrophel  and  Stella  will  the 
fascinated  student  find  a  passage  more  enchant- 
ing than  this: 

Thou  art  a  traitor  to  that  white  and  red 

Which  sitting  on  her  cheeks  (being  Cupid's  throne) 
Is  my  heart's  sovereign:  O,  when  she  is  dead, 

This  wonder,   Beauty,  shall  be  found  in  none. 
Now  Agripyne's  not  mine,   I  vow  to  be 
In  love  with  nothing  but  deformity. 
O  fair  Deformity,   I  muse  all  eyes 
Are  not  enamoured  of  thee:  thou  didst  never 
Murder  men's  hearts,  or  let  them  pine  like  wax, 
Melting  against  the  sun  of  thy  disdain;' 
Thou  art  a  faithful  nurse  to  Chastity; 

'  As  even  Lamb  allowed  the  meaningless  and  immetrical 
word  "destiny"  to  stand  at  the  end  of  this  line  in  place  of 
the  obviously  right  reading,  it  is  not  wonderful  that  all  later 
editors  of  this  passage  should  hitherto  have  done  so. 


THOMAS    DEKKER  6^ 

Thy  beauty  is  not  like  to  Agripyne's, 

For  cares,  and  age,  and  sickness,  hers  deface, 

But  thine   's  eternal:  O  Deformity, 

Thy  fairness  is  not  like  to  Agripyne's, 

For,  dead,  her  beauty  will  no  beavtty  have, 

But  thy  face  looks  most  lovely  in  the  grave. 


Shakespeare  has  nothing  more  exquisite  in  ex- 
pression of  passionate  fancy,  more  earnest  in 
emotion,  more  spontaneous  in  simplicity,  more 
perfect  in  romantic  inspiration.  But  the  poet's 
besetting  sin  of  laxity,  his  want  of  seriousness 
and  steadiness,  his  idle,  shambling,  shifty  way  of 
writing,  had  power  even  then,  in  the  very  prime 
of  his  promise,  to  impede  his  progress  and  impair 
his  chance  of  winning  the  race  which  he  had  set 
himself — and  yet  which  he  had  hardly  set  him- 
self— to  run.  And  if  these  things  were  done  in 
the  green  tree,  it  was  only  too  obvious  what  would 
be  done  in  the  dry ;  it  must  have  been  clear  that 
this  golden-tongued  and  gentle-hearted  poet  had 
not  strength  of  spirit  or  fervor  of  ambition  enough 
to  put  conscience  into  his  work  and  resolution  into 
his  fancies.  But  even  from  such  headlong  reck- 
lessness as  he  had  already  displayed  no  reader 
could  have  anticipated  so  singular  a  defiance  of 
all  form  and  order,  all  coherence  and  proportion, 
as  is  exhibited  in  his  "Satiromastix."  The  con- 
troversial part  of  the  play  is  so  utterly  alien  from 


68  THE   AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

the  romantic  part  that  it  is  impossible  to  regard 
them  as  component  factors  of  the  same  original 
plot.  It  seems  to  me  unquestionable  that  Dek- 
ker  must  have  conceived  the  design,  and  probable 
that  he  must  have  begun  the  composition,  of  a 
serious  play  on  the  subject  of  William  Rufus  and 
Sir  Walter  Tyrrel,  before  the  appearance  of  Ben 
Jonson's  "Poetaster"  impelled  or  instigated  him 
to  some  immediate  attempt  at  rejoinder;  and  that 
being  in  a  feverish  hurry  to  retort  the  blow  in- 
flicted on  him  by  a  heavier  hand  than  his  own  he 
devised — perhaps  between  jest  and  earnest — the 
preposterously  incoherent  plan  of  piecing  out  his 
farcical  and  satirical  design  by  patching  and 
stitching  it  into  his  unfinished  scheme  of  tragedy. 
It  may  be  assumed,  and  it  is  much  to  be  hoped, 
that  there  never  existed  another  poet  capable 
of  imagining — much  less  of  perpetrating — an  in- 
congruity so  monstrous  and  so  perverse.  The 
explanation  so  happily  suggested  by  a  modern 
critic  that  William  Rufus  is  meant  for  Shake- 
speare, and  that  "Lyly  is  Sir  Vaughan  ap  Rees," 
wants  only  a  little  further  development,  on.  the 
principle  of  analogy,  to  commend  itself  to  every 
scholar.  It  is  equally  obvious  that  the  low-bred 
and  foul-mouthed  ruffian  Captain  Tucca  must  be 
meant  for  Sir  Philip  Sidney;  the  vulgar  idiot 
Asinius  Bubo  for  Lord  Bacon;    the  half-witted 


THOMAS    DEKKER  69 

underling  Peter  Flash  for  Sir  Walter  Raleigh; 
and  the  immaculate  Celestina,  who  escapes  by 
stratagem  and  force  of  virtue  from  the  villanous 
designs  of  Shakespeare,  for  the  lady  long  since 
indicated  by  the  perspicacity  of  a  Chalmers  as 
the  object  of  that  lawless  and  desperate  passion 
which  found  utterance  in  the  sonnets  of  her  un- 
principled admirer — Queen  Elizabeth.  As  a  pre- 
vious suggestion  of  my  own,  to  the  effect  that 
George  Peele  was  probably  the  real  author  of 
"  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  has  had  the  singular  good- 
fortune  to  be  not  merely  adopted  but  appro- 
priated— in  serious  earnest — by  a  contemporary 
student,  without — as  far  as  I  am  aware — a  syl- 
lable of  acknowledgment,  I  cannot  but  antici- 
pate a  similar  acceptance  in  similar  quarters  for 
the  modest  effort  at  interpretation  now  submit- 
ted to  the  judgment  of  the  ingenuous  reader. 

Gifford  is  not  too  severe  on  the  palpable  in- 
congruities of  Dekker's  preposterous  medley :  but 
his  impeachment  of  Dekker  as  a  more  virulent 
and  intemperate  controversialist  than  Jonson  is 
not  less  preposterous  than  the  structure  of  this 
play.  The  nobly  gentle  and  manly  verses  in 
which  the  less  fortunate  and  distinguished  poet 
disclaims  and  refutes  the  imputation  of  envy  or 
malevolence  excited  by  the  favor  enjoyed  by  his 
rival  in  high  quarters  should  have  sufficed,  in 


70  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

common  justice,  to  protect  him  from  such  a 
charge.  There  is  not  a  word  in  Jonson's  satire 
expressive  of  anything  but  savage  and  unquaH- 
fied  scorn  for  his  humbler  antagonist:  and  the 
tribute  paid  by  that  antagonist  to  his  genius,  the 
appeal  to  his  better  nature  which  concludes  the 
torrent  of  recrimination,  would  have  won  some 
word  of  honorable  recognition  from  any  but  the 
most  unscrupulous  and  ungenerous  of  partisans. 
That  Dekker  was  unable  to  hold  his  own  against 
Jonson  when  it  came  to  sheer  hard  hitting — that 
on  the  ground  or  platform  of  personal  satire  he 
was  as  a  light-weight  pitted  against  a  heavy- 
weight— is  of  course  too  plain,  from  the  very  first 
round,  to  require  any  further  demonstration. 
But  it  is  not  less  plain  that  in  delicacy  and  sim- 
plicity and  sweetness  of  inspiration  the  poet  who 
could  write  the  scene  in  which  the  bride  takes 
poison  (as  she  believes)  from  the  hand  of  her 
father,  in  presence  of  her  bridegroom,  as  a  refuge 
from  the  passion  of  the  king,  was  as  far  above 
Jonson  as  Jonson  was  above  him  in  the  robuster 
qualities  of  intellect  or  genius.  This  most  lovely 
scene,  for  pathos  tempered  with  fancy  and  for 
passion  distilled  in  melody,  is  comparable  only 
with  higher  work,  of  rarer  composition  and  poetry 
more  pure,  than  Jonson's:  it  is  a  very  treasure- 
house  of  verses  like  jewels,  bright  as  tears  and 


THOMAS   DEKKER  71 

sweet  as  flowers.  When  Dekker  writes  like  this, 
then  truly  we  seem  to  see  his  right  hand  in  the 
left  hand  of  Shakespeare. 

To  find  the  names  of  Ben  Jonson  and  Thomas 
Dekker  amicably  associated  in  the  composition 
of  a  joint  poem  or  pageant  within  the  space  of  a 
year  from  the  publication  of  so  violent  a  retort  by 
the  latter  to  so  vehement  an  attack  by  the  former 
must  amuse  if  it  does  not  astonish  the  reader 
least  capable  of  surprise  at  the  boyish  readiness 
to  quarrel  and  the  boyish  readiness  to  shake  hands 
which  would  seem  to  be  implied  in  so  startling 
a  change  of  relations.  In  all  the  huge,  costly, 
wearisome,  barbaric,  and  pedantic  ceremonial 
which  welcomed  into  London  the  Solomon  of 
Scotland,  the  exhausted  student  who  attempts  to 
follow  the  ponderous  elaboration  of  report  drawn 
up  by  these  reconciled  enemies  will  remark  the 
solid  and  sedate  merit  of  Jonson's  best  couplets 
with  less  pleasure  than  he  will  receive  from  the 
quaint  sweetness  of  Dekker's  lyric  notes.  Admi- 
rable as  are  many  of  Ben  Jonson's  songs  for  their 
finish  of  style  and  fulness  of  matter,  it  is  impos- 
sible for  those  who  know  what  is  or  should  be  the 
special  aim  or  the  distinctive  quality  of  lyric  verse 
to  place  him  in  the  first  class — much  less,  in  the 
front  rank — of  lyric  poets.  He  is  at  his  best  a 
good  way  ahead  of  such  song-writers  as  Byron; 


72  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

but  Dekker  at  his  best  belongs  to  the  order  of 
such  song-writers  as  Blake  or  Shelley.  Perhaps 
the  very  finest  example  of  his  flawless  and  deli- 
cate simplicity  of  excellence  in  this  field  of  work 
may  be  the  well-known  song  in  honor  of  honest 
poverty  and  in  praise  of  honest  labor  which  so 
gracefully  introduces  the  heroine  of  a  play  pub- 
lished in  this  same  year  of  the  accession  of  James 
— "Patient  Grissel";  a  romantic  tragicomedy  so 
attractive  for  its  sweetness  and  lightness  of  tone 
and  touch  that  no  reader  will  question  the  judg- 
ment or  condemn  the  daring  of  the  poets  who 
ventured  upon  ground  where  Chaucer  had  gone 
before  them  with  such  gentle  stateliness  of  step 
and  such  winning  tenderness  of  gesture.  His 
deepest  note  of  pathos  they  have  not  even  at- 
tempted to  reproduce:  but  in  freshness  and 
straightforwardness,  in  frankness  and  simplicity 
of  treatment,  the  dramatic  version  is  not  gen- 
erally unworthy  to  be  compared  with  the  nar- 
rative which  it  follows  afar  off.'      Chettle  and 

*  I  may  here  suggest  a  slight  emendation  in  the  text  of  the 
spirited  and  graceful  scene  with  which  this  play  opens. 
The  original  reads: 

So  fares  it  with  coy  dames,  who,  great  with  scorn, 
Shew  the  care-pined  hearts  that  sue  to  them. 

The  word  Shejv  is  an  obvious  misprint — but  more  probably, 
I  venture  to  think,  for  the  word  Shun  than  for  the  word 
Fly,  which  is  substituted  by  Mr.  Collier  and  accepted  by 
Dr.  Grosart. 


THOMAS   DEKKER  73 

Haughton,  the  associates  of  Dekker  in  this  en- 
terprise, had  each  of  them  something  of  their 
colleague's  finer  qualities;  but  the  best  scenes  in 
the  play  remind  me  rather  of  Dekker's  best  early 
work  than  of  "Robert,  Earl  of  Huntington"  or 
of  "Englishmen  for  My  Money."  So  much  has 
been  said  of  the  evil  influence  of  Italian  example 
upon  English  character  in  the  age  of  Elizabeth, 
and  so  much  has  been  made  of  such  confessions 
or  imputations  as  distinguish  the  clamorous  and 
malevolent  penitence  of  Robert  Greene,  that  it  is 
more  than  agreeable  to  find  at  least  one  dramatic 
poet  of  the  time  who  has  the  manliness  to  enter 
a  frank  and  contemptuous  protest  against  this 
habit  of  malignant  self-excuse.  "Italy,"  says 
an  honest  gentleman  in  this  comedy  to  a  lying 
and  impudent  gull,  "Italy  infects  you  not,  but 
your  own  diseased  spirits.  Italy?  Out,  you 
froth,  you  scum!  because  your  soul  is  mud,  and 
that  you  have  breathed  in  Italy,  you'll  say  Italy 
has  defiled  you :  away,  you  boar :  thou  wilt  wallow 
in  mire  in  the  sweetest  country  in  the  world." 

There  are  many  traces  of  moral  or  spiritual 
weakness  and  infirmity  in  the  writings  of  Dekker 
and  the  scattered  records  or  indications  of  his  un- 
prosperous  though  not  unlaborious  career:  but 
there  are  manifest  and  manifold  signs  of  an  honest 
and  earnest  regard  for  justice  and  fair  dealing,  as 

6 


74  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

well  as  of  an  inexhaustible  compassion  for  suffer- 
ing, an  indestructible  persistency  of  pity,  which 
found  characteristic  expression  in  the  most  cele- 
brated of  his  plays.  There  is  a  great  gulf  between 
it  and  the  first  of  Victor  Hugo's  tragedies:  yet  the 
instinct  of  either  poet  is  the  same,  as  surely  as 
their  common  motive  is  the  redemption  of  a 
fallen  woman  by  the  influence  of  twin-born  love 
and  shame.  Of  all  Dekker's  works,  "The  Honest 
Whore"  comes  nearest  to  some  reasonable  de- 
gree of  unity  and  harmony  in  conception  and 
construction;  his  besetting  vice  of  reckless  and 
sluttish  incoherence  has  here  done  less  than  usual 
to  deform  the  proportions  and  deface  the  im- 
pression of  his  design.  Indeed,  the  connection 
of  the  two  serious  plots  in  the  first  part  is  a  rare 
example  of  dexterous  and  happy  simplicity  in 
composition:  the  comic  underplot  of  the  patient 
man  and  shrewish  wife  is  more  loosely  attached 
by  a  slighter  thread  of  relation  to  these  two  main 
stories,  but  is  so  amusing  in  its  light  and  facile 
play  of  inventive  merriment  and  harmless  mis- 
chief as  to  need  no  further  excuse.  Such  an 
excuse,  however,  might  otherwise  be  found  in  the 
plea  that  it  gives  occasion  for  the  most  beautiful, 
the  most  serious,  and  the  most  famous  passage 
in  all  the  writings  of  its  author.  The  first  scene 
of  this  first  part  has  always  appeared  to  me  one 


THOMAS   DEKKER  75 

of  the  most  effective  and  impressive  on  our  stage: 
the  interruption  of  the  mock  funeral  by  the  one 
true  mourner  whose  passion  it  was  intended  to 
deceive  into  despair  is  so  striking  as  a  mere  inci- 
dent or  theatrical  device  that  the  noble  and 
simple  style  in  which  the  graver  part  of  the  dia- 
logue is  wTitten  can  be  no  more  than  worthy  of 
the  subject:  whereas  in  other  plays  of  Dekker's 
the  style  is  too  often  beneath  the  merit  of  the 
subject,  and  the  subject  as  often  below  the  value 
of  the  style.  The  subsequent  revival  of  Infelice 
from  her  trance  is  represented  with  such  vivid 
and  delicate  power  that  the  scene,  short  and 
simple  as  it  is,  is  one  of  the  most  fascinating  in 
any  play  of  the  period.  In  none  of  these  higher 
and  finer  parts  of  the  poem  can  I  trace  the  touch 
of  any  other  hand  than  the  principal  author's: 
but  the  shopkeeping  scenes  of  the  underplot  have 
at  least  as  much  of  Middleton's  usual  quality  as 
of  Dekker's ;  homely  and  rough-cast  as  they  are, 
there  is  a  certain  finish  or  thoroughness  about 
them  which  is  more  like  the  careful  realism  of  the 
former  than  the  slovenly  naturalism  of  the  latter. 
The  coarse  commonplaces  of  the  sermon  on  pros- 
titution by  which  Bellafront  is  so  readily  and 
surprisingly  reclaimed  into  respectability  give  suf- 
ficient and  superfluous  proof  that  Dekker  had 
nothing  of  the  severe  and  fiery  inspiration  which. 


76  THE  AGE  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

makes  a  great  satirist  or  a  great  preacher;  but 
when  we  pass  again  into  a  sweeter  air  than  that 
of  the  boudoir  or  the  pulpit,  it  is  the  unmistak- 
able note  of  Dekker's  most  fervent  and  tender 
mood  of  melody  which  enchants  us  in  such  verses 
as  these,  spoken  by  a  lover  musing  on  the  por- 
trait of  a  mistress  whose  coflfin  has  been  borne 
before  him  to  the  semblance  of  a  grave  : 

Of  all  the  roses  grafted  on  her  cheeks, 
Of  all  the  graces  dancing  in  her  eyes, 
Of  all  the  music  set  upon  her  tongue. 
Of  all  that  was  past  woman's  excellence 
In  her  white  bosom,  look,  a  painted  board 
Circumscribes  all! 

Is  there  any  other  literature,  we  are  tempted  to 
ask  ourselves,  in  which  the  writer  of  these  lines, 
and  of  many  as  sweet  and  perfect  in  their  in- 
spired simplicity  as  these,  would  be  rated  no 
higher  among  his  countrymen  than  Thomas 
Dekker  ? 

From  the  indisputable  fact  of  Middleton's 
partnership  in  this  play  Mr.  Dyce  was  induced  to 
assume  the  very  questionable  inference  of  his 
partnership  in  the  sequel  which  was  licensed  for 
acting  five  years  later.  To  me  this  second  part 
seems  so  thoroughly  of  one  piece  and  one  pattern, 
so  apparently  the  result  of  one  man's  invention 
and  composition,  that  without  more  positive  evi- 


THOMAS    DEKKER  77 

dence  I  should  hesitate  to  assign  a  share  in  it  to 
any  colleague  of  the  poet  under  whose  name  it 
first  appeared.  There  are  far  fewer  scenes  or 
passages  in  this  than  in  the  preceding  play  which 
suggest  or  present  themselves  for  quotation  or 
selection:  the  tender  and  splendid  and  pensive 
touches  of  pathetic  or  imaginative  poetry  which 
we  find  in  the  first  part,  we  shall  be  disappointed 
if  we  seek  in  the  second:  its  incomparable  claim 
on  our  attention  is  the  fact  that  it  contains  the 
single  character  in  all  the  voluminous  and  miscel- 
laneous works  of  Dekker  which  gives  its  creator 
an  indisputable  right  to  a  place  of  perpetual 
honor  among  the  imaginative  humorists  of  Eng- 
land, and  therefore  among  the  memorable  artists 
and  creative  workmen  of  the  world.  Apart  from 
their  claim  to  remembrance  as  poets  and  dram- 
atists of  more  or  less  artistic  and  executive  ca- 
pacity, Dekker  and  Middleton  are  each  of  them 
worthy  to  be  remembered  as  the  inventor  or  dis- 
coverer of  a  wholly  original,  interesting,  and  nat- 
tural  type  of  character,  as  essentially  inimitable 
as  it  is  undeniably  unimitated :  the  savage  humor 
and  cynic  passion  of  De  Flores,  the  genial  pas- 
sion and  tender  humor  of  Orlando  Friscobaldo, 
are  equally  lifelike  in  the  truthfulness  and  com- 
pleteness of  their  distinct  and  vivid  presentation. 
The  merit  of  the  play  in  which  the  character  last 


78  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

named  is  a  leading  figure  consists  mainly  or  al- 
most wholly  in  the  presentation  of  the  three 
principal  persons:  the  reclaimed  harlot,  now  the 
faithful  and  patient  wife  of  her  first  seducer ;  the 
broken-down,  ruffianly,  light-hearted  and  light- 
headed libertine  who  has  married  her;  and  the 
devoted  old  father  who  watches  in  the  disguise 
of  a  servant  over  the  changes  of  her  fortune,  the 
sufferings,  risks,  and  temptations  which  try  the 
purity  of  her  penitence  and  confirm  the  fortitude 
of  her  constancy.  Of  these  three  characters  I 
cannot  but  think  that  any  dramatist  who  ever 
lived  might  have  felt  that  he  had  reason  to  be 
proud.  It  is  strange  that  Charles  Lamb,  to 
whom  of  all  critics  and  all  men  the  pathetic  and 
humorous  charm  of  the  old  man's  personality 
might  most  confidently  have  been  expected  most 
cordially  to  appeal,  should  have  left  to  Hazlitt 
and  Leigh  Hunt  the  honor  of  doing  justice  to 
so  beautiful  a  creation — the  crowning  evidence 
to  the  greatness  of  Dekker's  gifts,  his  power  of 
moral  imagination  and  his  delicacy  of  dramatic 
execution.  From  the  first  to  the  last  word  of 
his  part  the  quaint  sweet  humor  of  the  character 
is  sustained  with  an  instinctive  skill  which  would 
do  honor  to  a  far  more  careful  and  a  far  more 
famous  artist  than  Dekker.  The  words  with 
which  he  receives  the  false  news  of  his  fallen 


THOMAS   DEKKER  79 

daughter's  death :  "  Dead  ?  my  last  and  best  peace 
go  with  her!" — those  which  he  murmurs  to  him- 
self on  seeing  her  again  after  seventeen  years  of 
estrangement:  "The  mother's  own  face,  I  ha'  not 
forgot  that ' ' — prepare  the  way  for  the  admirable 
final  scene  in  which  his  mask  of  anger  drops  off, 
and  his  ostentation  of  obduracy  relaxes  into  ten- 
derness and  tears.  "  Dost  thou  beg  for  him,  thou 
precious  man's  meat,  thou  ?  has  he  not  beaten 
thee,  kicked  thee,  trod  on  thee?  and  dost  thou 
fawn  on  him  like  his  spaniel  ?  has  he  not  pawned 
thee  to  thy  petticoat,  sold  thee  to  thy  smock, 
made  ye  leap  at  a  crust?  yet  wouldst  have  me 
save  him  ? — What,  dost  thou  hold  him  ?  let  go  his 
hand:  if  thou  dost  not  forsake  him,  a  father's 
everlasting  blessing  fall  upon  both  your  heads!" 
The  fusion  of  humor  with  pathos  into  perfection 
of  exquisite  accuracy  in  expression  which  must  be 
recognized  at  once  and  remembered  forever  by 
any  competent  reader  of  this  scene  is  the  highest 
quality  of  Dekker  as  a  writer  of  prose,  and  is  here 
displayed  at  its  highest:  the  more  poetic  or  ro- 
mantic quality  of  his  genius  had  already  begun 
to  fade  out  w^hen  this  second  part  of  his  finest 
poem  was  written.  Hazlitt  has  praised  the  origi- 
nality, dexterity,  and  vivacity  of  the  effect  pro- 
duced by  the  stratagem  which  Infelice  employs 
for  the  humiliation  of  her  husband,   when   by 


8o  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

accusing  herself  of  imaginary  infidelity  under 
the  most  incredibly  degrading  conditions  she  en- 
traps him  into  gratuitous  fury  and  turns  the 
tables  on  him  by  the  production  of  evidence 
against  himself;  and  the  scene  is  no  doubt  the- 
atrically effective :  but  the  grace  and  delicacy  of 
the  character  are  sacrificed  to  this  comparatively 
unworthy  consideration:  the  pure,  high-minded, 
noble-hearted  lady,  whose  loyal  and  passionate 
affection  was  so  simply  and  so  attractively  dis- 
played in  the  first  part  of  her  story,  is  so  lament- 
ably humiliated  by  the  cunning  and  daring  im- 
modesty of  such  a  device  that  we  hardly  feel  it  so 
revolting  an  incongruity  as  it  should  have  been 
to  see  this  princess  enjoying,  in  common  with 
her  father  and  her  husband,  the  spectacle  of 
imprisoned  harlots  on  penitential  parade  in  the 
Bridewell  of  Milan;  a  thoroughly  Hogarthian 
scene  in  the  grim  and  vivid  realism  of  its  tragi- 
comic humor. 

But  if  the  poetic  and  realistic  merits  of  these 
two  plays  make  us  understand  why  Webster 
should  have  coupled  its  author  with  the  author 
of  "Twelfth  Night"  and  "The  Merry  Wives  of 
Windsor,"  the  demerits  of  the  two  plays  next 
published  under  his  single  name  are  so  grave,  so 
gross,  so  manifold,  that  the  writer  seems  un- 
worthy to  be  coupled  as  a  dramatist  with  a 


THOMAS    DEKKER  8i 

journeyman  poet  so  far  superior  to  him  in  honest 
thoroughness  and  smoothness  of  workmanship 
as,  even  at  his  very  hastiest  and  crudest,  was 
Thomas  Heywood.  In  style  and  versification 
the  patriotic  and  anti-CathoHc  drama  which 
bears  the  Protestant  and  apocalyptic  title  of 
"The  Whore  of  Babylon"  is  still,  upon  the  whole, 
very  tolerably  spirited  and  fluent,  w4th  gleams  of 
fugitive  poetry  and  glimpses  of  animated  action ; 
but  the  construction  is  ponderous  and  puerile,  the 
declamation  vacuous  and  vehement.  An  ^schy- 
lus  alone  could  have  given  us,  in  a  tragedy  on  the 
subject  of  the  Salamis  of  England,  a  fit  compan- 
ion to  the  ' '  Persas  " ;  which,  as  Shakespeare  let  the 
chance  pass  by  him,  remains  alone  forever  in  the 
incomparable  glory  of  its  trumphant  and  sublime 
perfection.  Marlowe  perhaps  might  have  made 
something  of  it,  though  the  task  would  have  taxed 
his  energies  to  the  utmost,  and  overtasked  the 
utmost  of  his  skill;  Dekker  could  make  nothing. 
The  Empress  of  Babylon  is  but  a  poor  slipshod 
ragged  prostitute  in  the  hands  of  this  poetic 
beadle:  "non  ragioniam  di  lei,  ma  guarda  e 
passa." 

Of  the  three  plays  in  which  Dekker  took  part 
with  Webster,  the  two  plays  in  which  he  took  part 
with  Ford,  and  the  second  play  in  which  he  took 
part  with  Middleton,  I  have  spoken  respectively 


82  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

in  my  several  essays  on  those  other  three  poets. 
The  next  play  which  bears  his  name  alone  was 
published  five  years  later  than  the  political  or 
historical  sketch  or  study  which  we  have  just  dis- 
missed; and  which,  compared  with  it,  is  a  toler- 
able if  not  a  creditable  piece  of  work.  It  is  dif- 
ficult to  abstain  from  intemperate  language  in 
speaking  of  such  a  dramatic  abortion  as  that 
which  bears  the  grotesque  and  puerile  inscrip- 
tion, "If  this  be  not  a  good  Play,  the  Devil  is  in 
it."  A  worse  has  seldom  discredited  the  name 
of  any  man  with  a  spark  of  genius  in  him. 
Dryden's  delectable  tragedy  of  "Amboyna," 
Lee's  remarkable  tragicomedy  of  "Gloriana," 
Pope's  elegant  comedy  of  "Three  Hours  after 
Marriage,"  are  scarcely  more  unworthy  of  their 
authors,  more  futile  or  more  flaccid  or  more 
audacious  in  their  headlong  and  unabashed  in- 
competence. Charity  would  suggest  that  it  must 
have  been  written  against  time  in  a  debtor's 
prison,  under  the  influence  of  such  liquor  as 
Catherina  Bountinall  or  Doll  Tearsheet  would 
have  flung  at  the  tapster's  head  with  an  accom- 
paniment of  such  language  as  those  eloquent  and 
high-spirited  ladies,  under  less  offensive  provoca- 
tion, were  wont  to  lavish  on  the  officials  of  an 
oppressive  law.  I  have  read  a  good  deal  of 
bad  verse,  but  anything  like  the  metre  of  this 


THOMAS   DEKKER  83 

play  I  have  never  come  across  in  all  the  range 
of  that  excruciating  experience.  The  rare  and 
faint  indications  that  the  writer  was  or  had  been 
an  humorist  and  a  poet  serve  only  to  bring  into 
fuller  relief  the  reckless  and  shameless  incom- 
petence of  the  general  workmanship/ 

This  supernatural  and  "  superlunatical "  at- 
tempt at  serious  farce  or  farcical  morality  marks 

*  As  I  have  given  elsewhere  a  sample  of  Dekker  at  his  best, 
I  give  here  a  sample  taken  at  random  from  the  opening  of 
this  unhappy  play; 

Hie  thee  to  Naples,  Rufman;  thou  shalt  find 

A  prince  there  newly  crowned,  aptly  inclined 

To  any  bendings:  lest  his  youthful  brows 

Reach  at  stars  only,  weigh  down  his  loftiest  boughs 

With  leaden  plummets,  poison  his  best  thoughts  with  taste 

Of  things  most  sensual:  if  the  heart  once  waste, 

The  body  feels  consumption:  good  or  bad  kings 

Breed  subjects  like   them:   clear  streams  flow  from  clear 

springs. 
Turn  therefore  Naples  to  a  puddle:  with  a  civil 
Much  promising  face,  and  well  oiled,  play  the  court  devil. 

The  vigorous  melody  of  these  "masculine  numbers"  is  not 
more  remarkable  for  its  virile  force  and  honied  fluency  than 
is  the  lighter  dialogue  of  the  play  for  such  brilliant  wit  or 
lambent  humor  as  flashes  out  in  pleasantries  like  this : 

King.  What  are  you,  and  whence  come  you  ? 

Rufman.  From  Helvetia. 

Spendola.  What  hell  says  he  ? 

Jovinelli.  Peace;  you  shall  know  hot  hell  \sic'\  time  enough. 

"I  hope  here  be  proofs"  that  my  strictures  on  the  worst 
work  of  a  poet  whose  best  work  I  treasure  so  heartily,  and 
whose  best  qualities  I  rate  so  highly,  are  rather  too  sparing 
than  too  severe. 


84  THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

the  nadir  of  Dekker's  ability  as  a  dramatist.  The 
diabolic  part  of  the  tragicomic  business  is  dis- 
tinctly inferior  to  the  parallel  or  similar  scenes 
in  the  much  older  play  of  "Grim  the  Collier  of 
Croydon,"  which  is  perhaps  more  likely  to  have 
been  the  writer's  immediate  model  than  the  orig- 
inal story  by  Machiavelli.  The  two  remaining 
plays  now  extant  which  bear  the  single  name  of 
Dekker  give  no  sign  of  his  highest  powers,  but 
are  tolerable  examples  of  journeyman's  work  in 
the  field  of  romantic  or  fanciful  comedy.  "  Match 
Me  in  London"  is  the  better  play  of  the  two,  very 
fairly  constructed  after  its  simple  fashion,  and 
reasonably  well  written  in  a  smooth  and  un- 
ambitious style:  "The  Wonder  of  a  Kingdom"  is 
a  light,  slight,  rough  piece  of  work,  in  its  con- 
trasts of  character  as  crude  and  boyish  as  any 
of  the  old  moralities,  and  in  its  action  as  mere 
a  dance  of  puppets:  but  it  shows  at  least  that 
Dekker  had  regained  the  faculty  of  writing  decent 
verse  on  occasion.  The  fine  passage  quoted  by 
Scott  in  The  Antiquary  and  taken  by  his  ed- 
itors to  be  a  forgery  of  his  own,  will  be  familiar 
to  many  myriads  of  readers  who  are  never  likely 
to  look  it  up  in  the  original  context.  Of  two 
masks  called  "Britannia's  Honor"  and  "Lon- 
don's Tempe"  it  must  suffice  to  say  that  the 
former  contains  a  notable  specimen  of  cockney  or 


THOMAS   DEKKER  85 

canine  French  which  may  ser\'e  to  relieve  the 
conscientious  reader's  weariness,  and  the  latter  a 
comic  song  of  blacksmiths  at  work  which  may 
pass  muster  at  a  pinch  as  a  tolerably  quaint  and 
lively  piece  of  rough  and  ready  fancy.  But 
Jonson  for  the  court  and  Middleton  for  the  city 
were  far  better  craftsmen  in  this  line  than  ever 
was  Dekker  at  his  best. 

Two  plays  remain  for  notice  in  which  the  part 
taken  by  Dekker  would  be,  I  venture  to  think, 
unmistakable,  even  if  no  external  evidence  were 
extant  of  his  partnership  in  either.  As  it  is,  we 
know  that  in  the  winter  which  saw  the  close  of 
the  sixteenth  century  he  was  engaged  with  the 
author  of  "The  Parliament  of  Bees"  and  the 
author  of  "Englishmen  for  My  Money"  in  the 
production  of  a  play  called  ' '  The  Spanish  Moor's 
Tragedy."  More  than  half  a  century  afterward  a 
tragedy  in  which  a  Spanish  Moor  is  the  principal 
and  indeed  the  only  considerable  agent  was  pub- 
lished, and  attributed — of  all  poets  in  the  world 
— to  Christopher  Marlowe,  by  a  knavish  and  ig- 
norant bookseller  of  the  period.  That  "Lust's 
Dominion;  or,  the  Lascivious  Queen,"  was  partly 
founded  on  a  pamphlet  published  after  Marlowe's 
death  was  not  a  consideration  sufficient  to  offer 
any  impediment  to  this  imposture.  That  the 
hand  which  in  the  year  of  this  play's  appearance 


86  THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

on  the  stage  gave  "Old  Fortunatus"  to  the  world 
of  readers  was  the  hand  to  which  we  owe  the 
finer  scenes  or  passages  of  "Lust's  Dominion," 
the  whole  of  the  opening  scene  bears  such  ap- 
parent witness  as  requires  no  evidence  to  support 
and  would  require  very  conclusive  evidence  to 
confute  it.  The  sweet  spontaneous  luxury  of 
the  lines  in  w^hich  the  queen  strives  to  seduce  her 
paramour  out  of  sullenness  has  the  very  ring 
of  Dekker's  melody :  the  rough  and  reckless  rattle 
of  the  abrupt  rhymes  intended  to  express  a  sud- 
den vehemence  of  change  and  energy;  the  con- 
stant repetition  or  reiteration  of  interjections  and 
ejaculations  which  are  evidently  supposed  to  give 
an  air  of  passionate  realism  and  tragic  nature 
to  the  jingling  and  jerky  dialogue;  many  little 
mannerisms  too  trivial  to  specify  and  too  obvious 
to  mistake ;  the  occasional  spirit  and  beauty,  the 
frequent  crudity  and  harshness,  of  the  impetuous 
and  uncertain  style;  the  faults  no  less  than  the 
merits,  the  merits  as  plainly  as  the  faults,  at- 
test the  presence  of  his  fitful  and  wilful  genius 
with  all  the  defects  of  its  qualities  and  all  the 
weakness  of  its  strength.  The  chaotic  extrava- 
gance of  collapse  which  serves  by  way  of  catas- 
trophe to  bring  the  action  headlong  to  a  close  is 
not  more  puerile  in  the  violence  of  its  debility 
than  the  conclusions  of  other  plays  by  Dekker; 


THOMAS   DEKKER  87 

conclusions  which  might  plausibly  appear,  to  a 
malcontent  or  rather  to  a  lenient  reader,  the  im- 
provisations of  inebriety.  There  is  but  one  char- 
acter which  stands  out  in  anything  of  life-like 
relief;  for  the  queen  and  her  paramour  are  but 
the  usual  diabolic  puppets  of  the  contemporary 
tragic  stage:  but  there  is  something  of  life-blood 
in  the  part  of  the  honest  and  hot-headed  young 
prince.  This  too  is  very  like  Dekker,  whose  idle 
and  impatient  energy  could  seldom  if  ever  sustain 
a  diffused  or  divided  interest,  but  except  when 
working  hopelessly  and  heartlessly  against  time 
was  likely  to  fix  on  some  special  point,  and  give 
life  at  least  to  some  single  figure. 

There  is  nothing  incongruous  in  his  appearance 
as  a  playwright  in  partnership  with  Middleton  or 
with  Chettle,  with  Haughton  or  w4th  Day;  but 
a  stranger  association  than  that  of  Massinger's 
name  with  Dekker's  it  would  not  be  easy  to  con- 
ceive. Could  either  poet  have  lent  the  other 
something  of  his  own  best  quality,  could  Massin- 
ger  have  caught  from  Dekker  the  freshness  and 
spontaneity  of  his  poetic  inspiration,  and  Dekker 
have  learned  of  Massinger  the  conscientious  ex- 
cellence and  studious  self-respect  of  his  dramatic 
workmanship,  the  result  must  have  been  one  of 
the  noblest  and  completest  masterpieces  of  the 
English  stage.     As  it  is,  the  famous  and  beautiful 


88  THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

play  which  we  owe  to  the  alHance  of  their  powers 
is  a  proverbial  example  of  incongruous  contrasts 
and  combinations.  The  opening  and  the  closing 
scenes  were  very  properly  and  very  fortunately 
consigned  to  the  charge  of  the  younger  and 
sedater  poet :  so  that,  whatever  discrepancy  may 
disturb  the  intervening  acts,  the  grave  and  sober 
harmonies  of  a  temperate  and  serious  artist  begin 
and  end  the  concert  in  perfect  correspondence  of 
consummate  execution.  "The  first  act  of  'The 
Virgin  Martyr,' "  said  Coleridge,  "is  as  fine  an  act 
as  I  remember  in  any  play."  And  certainly  it 
would  be  impossible  to  find  one  in  which  the  busi- 
ness of  the  scene  is  more  skilfully  and  smoothly 
opened,  with  more  happiness  of  arrangement, 
more  dignity  and  dexterity  of  touch.  But  most 
lovers  of  poetry  would  give  it  all,  and  a  dozen 
such  triumphs  of  scenical  and  rhetorical  com- 
position, for  the  brief  dialogue  in  the  second 
act  between  the  heroine  and  her  attendant  angel. 
Its  simplicity  is  so  childlike,  its  inspiration  so 
pure  in  instinct  and  its  expression  so  perfect 
in  taste,  its  utterance  and  its  abstinence,  its  ef- 
fusion and  its  reserve,  are  so  far  beyond  praise 
or  question  or  any  comment  but  thanksgiving, 
that  these  forty-two  lines,  homely  and  humble  in 
manner  as  they  are  if  compared  with  the  refined 
rhetoric  and  the  scrupulous  culture  of  Massinger, 


THOMAS   UEKKER  89 

would  suffice  to  keep  the  name  of  Dekker  sweet 
and  safe  forever  among  the  most  memorable  if 
not  among  the  most  pre-eminent  of  his  kindred 
and  his  age.  The  four  scenes  of  rough  and  rank 
buffoonery  which  deface  this  act  and  the  two 
following  have  given  very  reasonable  offence  to 
critics  from  whom  they  have  provoked  very  un- 
reasonable reflections.  That  they  represent  the 
coarser  side  of  the  genius  whose  finer  aspect  is 
shown  in  the  sweetest  passages  of  the  poem  has 
never  been  disputed  by  any  one  capable  of  learn- 
ing the  rudiments  or  the  accidence  of  literary 
criticism.  An  admirable  novelist  and  poet  who 
had  the  misfortune  to  mistake  himself  for  a 
theologian  and  a  critic  was  unlucky  enough  to 
assert  that  he  knew  not  on  what  ground  these 
brutal  buffooneries  had  been  assigned  to  their  un- 
mistakable author;  in  other  words,  to  acknowl- 
edge his  ignorance  of  the  first  elements  of  the 
subject  on  which  it  pleased  him  to  write  in  a  tone 
of  critical  and  spiritual  authority.  Not  even  when 
his  unwary  and  unscrupulous  audacity  of  self- 
confidence  impelled  Charles  Kingsley  to  challenge 
John  Henry  Newman  to  the  duel  of  which  the  up- 
shot left  him  gasping  so  piteously  on  the  ground 
selected  for  their  tournament  —  not  even  then 
did  the  author  of  Hypatia  display  such  a  daring 

and  immedicable  capacity  of  misrepresentation 
7 


90  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

based  on  misconception  as  when  this  most  in- 
genuously disingenuous  of  all  controversialists 
avowed  himself  "aware  of  no  canons  of  internal 
criticism  which  would  enable  us  to  decide  as 
boldly  as  Mr.  Gifford  does  that  all  the  indecency  is 
Dekker's  and  all  the  poetry  Massinger's."  Now 
the  words  of  Gifford's  note  on  the  dialogue  of 
which  I  have  already  spoken,  between  the  saint 
and  the  angel,  are  these:  "  What  follows  is  ex- 
quisitely beautiful.  ...  I  am  persuaded  that  this 
also  was  written  by  Dekker."  And  seeing  that 
no  mortal  critic  but  Kingsley  ever  dreamed  of 
such  absurdity  as  Kingsley  rushes  forward  to 
refute,  his  controversial  capacity  will  probably 
be  regarded  by  all  serious  students  of  poetry  or 
criticism  as  measurable  by  the  level  of  his  ca- 
pacity for  accurate  report  of  fact  or  accurate 
citation  of  evidence. 

There  are  times  when  we  are  tempted  to  de- 
nounce the  Muse  of  Dekker  as  the  most  shiftless 
and  shameless  of  slovens  or  of  sluts ;  but  when  we 
consider  the  quantity  of  work  which  she  managed 
to  struggle  or  shuffle  through  with  such  oc- 
casionally admirable  and  memorable  results,  we 
are  once  more  inclined  to  reclaim  for  her  a  place 
of  honor  among  her  more  generally  respectable 
or  reputable  sisters.  I  am  loath  to  believe  what 
I  see  no  reason  to  suppose,  that  she  was  responsi- 


THOMAS   DEKKER  91 

ble  for  the  dismal  drivel  of  a  poem  on  the  fall 
of  Jerusalem,  which  is  assigned,  on  the  surely 
dangerous  ground  of  initials  subscribed  under 
the  dedication,  to  a  writer  who  had  the  misfort- 
une to  share  these  initials  with  Thomas  Deloney. 
The  ballad-writing  hack  may  have  been  capable 
of  sinking  so  far  below  the  level  of  a  penny  bal- 
lad as  to  perpetrate  this  monstrous  outrage  on 
human  patience  and  on  English  verse;  but  the 
most  conclusive  evidence  would  be  necessary  to 
persuade  a  jury  of  competent  readers  that  a  poet 
must  be  found  guilty  of  its  authorship.  And  we 
know  that  a  pamphlet  or  novelette  of  Deloney's 
called  "Thomas  of  Reading;  or,  the  Six  Worthy 
Yeomen  of  the  West, ' '  was  ascribed  to  Dekker  un- 
til the  actual  author  was  discovered.^  Dr.  Gro- 
sart,  to  whom  we  owe  the  first  collected  edition  of 
Dekker's  pamphlets,  says  in  the  introduction  to 
the  fifth  of  his  beautiful  volumes  that  he  should 
have  doubted  the  responsibility  of  Dekker  for  a 

'  It  would  be  a  very  notable  addition  to  Dekker's  claims 
on  our  remembrance  if  he  had  indeed  written  the  admirable 
narrative,  worthy  of  Defoe  at  his  very  best,  which  describes 
with  such  impressive  simplicity  of  tragic  effect  the  presageful 
or  premonitory  anguish  of  a  man  on  his  unconscious  way  to 
a  sudden  and  a  secret  death  of  unimaginable  horror.  Had 
Deloney  done  more  such  work  as  this,  and  abjured  the  in- 
effectual service  of  an  inauspicious  Muse,  his  name  would 
now  be  famous  among  the  founders  and  the  masters  of 
realistic  fiction. 


92  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

poem  with  which  it  may  perhaps  be  unfair  to 
saddle  even  so  humble  a  hackney  on  the  poetic 
highway  as  the  jaded  Pegasus  of  Deloney,  had 
he  not  been  detected  as  the  author  of  another 
religious  book.  But  this  latter  is  a  book  of  the 
finest  and  rarest  quality  —  one  of  its  author's 
most  unquestionable  claims  to  immortality  in 
the  affection  and  admiration  of  all  but  the  most 
unworthy  readers;  and  "Canaan's  Calamity" 
is  one  of  the  worst  metrical  samples  extant  of 
religious  rubbish.  As  far  as  such  inferential 
evidence  can  be  allowed  to  attest  anything,  the 
fact  of  Dekker's  having  written  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  and  simple  of  religious  books  in  prose 
tends  surely  rather  to  disprove  than  to  prove  his 
authorship  of  one  of  the  feeblest  and  most  pre- 
tentious of  semi-sacred  rhapsodies  in  verse. 

Among  his  numerous  pamphlets,  satirical  or 
declamatory,  on  the  manners  of  his  time  and  the 
observations  of  his  experience,  one  alone  stands 
out  as  distinct  from  the  rest  by  right  of  such 
astonishing  superiority  in  merit  of  style  and  in- 
terest of  matter  that  I  prefer  to  reserve  it  for 
separate  and  final  consideration.  But  it  would 
require  more  time  and  labor  than  I  can  afford 
to  give  an  adequate  account  of  so  many  effu- 
sions or  improvisations  as  served  for  fuel  to  boil 
the  scanty  and  precarious  pot  of  his  uncertain 


THOMAS   DEKKER  93 

and  uncomfortable  sustenance.  "The  Wonderful 
Year"  of  the  death  of  Elizabeth,  the  accession  of 
James,  and  the  devastation  of  London  by  pesti- 
lence, supplied  him  with  matter  enough  for  one 
of  his  quaintest  and  liveliest  tracts:  in  which  the 
historical  part  has  no  quality  so  valuable  or  re- 
markable as  the  grotesque  mixture  of  horror  and 
humor  in  the  anecdotes  appended  "like  a  merry 
epilogue  to  a  dull  play,  of  purpose  to  shorten  the 
lives  of  long  winter's  nights  that  lie  watching  in 
the  dark  for  us,"  with  touches  of  rude  and  vivid 
pleasantry  not  unworthy  to  remind  us,  I  dare 
not  say  of  the  Decameron,  but  at  least  of  the 
Cent  Nouvelles  Nouvelles.  In  "The  Seven  Dead- 
ly Sins  of  London" — one  of  the  milder  but  less 
brilliant  Latter  -  day  Pamphlets  of  a  gentler  if 
no  less  excitable  Carlyle — there  are  touches  of 
earnest  eloquence  as  well  as  many  quaint  and 
fitful  illustrations  of  social  history;  but  there 
is  less  of  humorous  vigor  and  straightforward 
realism  than  in  the  preceding  tract.  And  yet 
there  are  good  things  to  be  gathered  out  of  this 
effusive  and  vehement  lay  sermon ;  this  sentence, 
for  example,  is  worth  recollection:  "He  is  not 
slothful  that  is  only  lazy,  that  only  wastes  his 
good  hours  and  his  silver  in  luxury  and  licentious 
ease:— no,  he  is  the  true  slothful  man,  that  does 
no  good."     And  there  is  genuine  insight  as  well 


94  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

as  honesty  and  courage  in  his  remonstrance  with 
the  self-love  and  appeal  against  the  self-deceit 
of  his  countrymen,  so  prone  to  cry  out  on  the 
cruelty  of  others,  on  the  blood-thirstiness  of 
Frenchmen  and  Spaniards,  and  to  overlook  the 
hea\^-headed  brutality  of  their  own  habitual 
indifference  and  neglect.  Although  the  cruelty 
of  penal  laws  be  now  abrogated,  yet  the  condition 
of  the  poorest  among  us  is  assuredly  not  such 
that  we  can  read  without  a  sense  of  their  present 
veracity  the  last  words  of  this  sentence:  "Thou 
set'st  up  posts  to  whip  them  when  they  are  alive : 
set  up  an  hospital  to  comfort  them  being  sick,  or 
purchase  ground  for  them  to  dwell  in  when  they 
be  well;  and  that  is,  when  they  be  dead."  The 
next  of  Dekker's  tracts  is  more  of  a  mere  imita- 
tion than  any  of  his  others:  the  influence  of  a 
more  famous  pamphleteer  and  satirist,  Tom 
Nash,  is  here  not  only  manifest  as  that  of  a  model, 
but  has  taken  such  possession  of  his  disciple 
that  he  is  hardly  more  than  a  somewhat  servile 
copyist ;  not  without  a  touch  of  his  master's  more 
serious  eloquence,  but  with  less  than  little  of  his 
peculiar  energy  and  humor.  That  rushing  wind 
of  satire,  that  storm  of  resonant  invective,  that 
inexhaustible  volubility  of  contempt,  which  rages 
through  the  controversial  writings  of  the  lesser 
poet,  has  sunk  to  a  comparative  whisper;  the 


THOMAS    DEKKER  95 

roar  of  his  Homeric  or  Rabelaisian  laughter  to 
a  somewhat  forced  and  artificial  chuckle.  This 
"  News  from  Hell,  brought  by  the  Devil's  Carrier," 
and  containing  "The  Devil's  Answer  to  Pierce 
Penniless,"  might  have  miscarried  by  the  way 
without  much  more  loss  than  that  of  such  an 
additional  proof  as  we  could  have  been  content 
to  spare  of  Dekker's  incompetence  to  deal  with  a 
subject  which  he  was  curiously  fond  of  handling 
in  earnest  and  in  jest.  He  seems  indeed  to  have 
fancied  himself,  if  not  something  of  a  Dante, 
something  at  least  of  a  Quevedo;  but  his  terrors 
are  merely  tedious,  and  his  painted  devils  would 
not  terrify  a  babe.  In  this  tract,  however,  there 
are  now  and  then  some  fugitive  felicities  of 
expression ;  and  this  is  more  than  can  be  said  for 
either  the  play  or  the  poem  in  which  he  has 
gone,  with  feebler  if  not  more  uneasy  steps  than 
Milton's  Satan,  over  the  same  ground  of  burn- 
ing marl.  There  is  some  spirit  in  the  prodigal's 
denunciation  of  his  miserly  father:  but  the  best 
thing  in  the  pamphlet  is  the  description  of  the 
soul  of  a  hero  bound  for  paradise,  whose  name 
is  given  only  in  the  revised  and  enlarged  edition 
which  appeared  a  year  later  under  the  title  of 
"A  Knight's  Conjuring;  done  in  earnest;  dis- 
covered in  jest."  The  narrative  of  "William 
Eps  his  death"  is  a  fine  example  of  that  fiery 


96  THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

sympathy  with  soldiers  which  glows  in  so  many 
pages  of  Dekkcr's  verse,  and  flashes  out  by  fits 
through  the  murky  confusion  of  his  worst  and 
most  formless  plays ;  but  the  introduction  of  this 
hero  is  as  fine  a  passage  of  prose  as  he  has  left  us : 

The  foremost  of  them  was  a  personage  of  so  com- 
posed a  presence,  that  Nature  and  Fortune  had  done 
him  wrong,  if  they  had  not  made  him  a  soldier.  In  his 
countenance  there  was  a  kind  of  indignation,  fighting  with 
a  kind  of  exalted  joy,  which  by  his  very  gesture  were 
apparently  decipherable;  for  he  was  jocund,  that  his 
soul  went  out  of  him  in  so  glorious  a  triumph;  but 
disdainfully  angry,  that  she  wrought  her  enlargement 
through  no  more  dangers :  yet  were  there  bleeding  wit- 
nesses enow  on  his  breast,  which  testified,  he  did  not 
yield  till  he  was  conquered,  and  was  not  conquered, 
till  there  was  left  nothing  of  a  man  in  him  to  be  over- 
come. 

That  the  poet's  loyalty  and  devotion  were  at 
least  as  ardent  when  off"ered  by  his  gratitude  to 
sailors  as  to  soldiers  we  may  see  by  this  descrip- 
tion of  "The  Seaman"  in  his  next  work: 

A  progress  doth  he  take  from  realm  to  realm, 
With  goodly  water-pageants  borne  before  him; 
The  safety  of  the  land  sits  at  his  helm. 
No  danger  here  can  touch,  but  what  runs  o'er  him: 
But  being  in  heaven's  eye  still,  it  doth  restore  him 
To  livelier  spirts;  to  meet  death  with  ease, 
//  thou  ivouldst  know  thy  maker,  search  the  seas} 

'  The  italics  arc  here  the  author's. 


THOxMAS    DEKKER  97 

These  homely  but  hearty  lines  occur  in  a  small 
and  mainly  metrical  tract  bearing  a  title  so  quaint 
that  I  am  tempted  to  transcribe  it  at  length: 
"The  Double  PP.  A  Papist  in  Arms.  Bearing 
Ten  several  Shields.  Encountered  by  the  Prot- 
estant. At  Ten  several  Weapons.  A  Jesuit 
Marching  before  them.  Cominiis  and  Eminias." 
There  are  a  few  other  vigorous  and  pointed 
verses  in  this  little  patriotic  impromptu,  but 
the  greater  part  of  it  is  merely  curious  and  ec- 
centric doggrel. 

The  next  of  Dekker's  tracts  or  pamphlets 
was  the  comparatively  well-known  "Gull's  Horn- 
book." This  brilliant  and  vivid  little  satire  is  so 
rich  in  simple  humor,  and  in  life-like  photography 
taken  by  the  sunlight  of  an  honest  and  kindly 
nature,  that  it  stands  second  only  to  the  author's 
masterpiece  in  prose,  "The  Bachelor's  Banquet," 
which  has  waited  so  much  longer  for  even  the 
limited  recognition  implied  by  a  private  reprint. 
There  are  so  many  witty  or  sensible  or  humorous 
or  grotesque  excerpts  to  be  selected  from  this 
pamphlet — and  not  from  the  parts  borrowed  or 
copied  from  a  foreign  satire  on  the  habits  of 
slovenly  Hollanders — that  I  take  the  first  which 
comes  under  my  notice  on  reopening  the  book; 
a  study  which  sets  before  us  in  fascinating  relief 
the  professional  poeticule  of  a  period  in  which  as 


98  THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

yet  clubs,  coteries,  and  newspapers  were  not — or 
at  the  worst  were  nothing  to  speak  of: 

If  you  be  a  Poet,  and  come  into  the  Ordinary  (though 
it  can  be  no  great  glory  to  be  an  ordinary  Poet)  order 
yourself  thus.  Observe  no  man,  doff  not  cap  to  that 
gentleman  to-day  at  dinner,  to  whom,  not  two  nights 
since,  you  were  beholden  for  a  supper;  but,  after  a  turn 
or  two  in  the  room,  take  occasion  (pulling  out  your 
gloves)  to  have  Epigram,  or  Satire,  or  Sonnet  fastened 
in  one  of  them,  that  may  (as  it  were  unwittingly  to  you) 
offer  itself  to  the  Gentlemen :  they  will  presently  desire 
it:  but,  without  much  conjuration  from  them,  and  a 
pretty  kind  of  counterfeit  lothness  in  yourself,  do  not 
read  it ;  and,  though  it  be  none  of  your  own,  swear  you 
made  it. 

This  coupUng  of  injunction  and  prohibition  is 
worthy  of  Shakespeare  or  of  Sterne: 

Marry,  if  you  chance  to  get  into  your  hands  any  witty 
thing  of  another  man's,  that  is  somewhat  better,  I  wotdd 
counsel  you  then,  if  demand  be  made  who  composed 
it,  you  may  say:  "  'Faith,  a  learned  Gentleman,  a  very 
worthy  friend."  And  this  seeming  to  lay  it  on  another 
man  will  be  counted  either  modesty  in  you,  or  a  sign 
that  you  are  not  ambitious  of  praise,  or  else  that  yoti 
dare  not  take  it  upon  you,  for  fear  of  the  sharpness  it 
carries  with  it. 

The  modem  poetaster  by  profession  knows  a 
trick  worth  any  two  of  these :  but  it  is  curious  to 
observe  the  community  of  baseness,  and  the  com- 
parative innocence  of  awkwardness  and  inexpe- 
rience, which  at  once  connote  the  species  and 


THOMAS    DEKKER  99 

denote  the  specimens  of  the  later  and  the  earUer 
animalcule. 

The  "Jests  to  make  you  merry,"  which  in  Dr. 
Grosart's  edition  arc  placed  after  "The  Gull's 
Horn-book,"  though  dated  two  years  earlier,  will 
hardly  give  so  much  entertainment  to  any  prob- 
able reader  in  our  own  time  as  "The  Misery  of  a 
Prison,  and  a  Prisoner,"  will  give  him  pain  to 
read  of  in  the  closing  pages  of  the  same  pamphlet, 
when  he  remembers  how  long — at  the  lowest 
computation — its  author  had  endured  the  loath- 
some and  hideous  misery  which  he  has  described 
with  such  bitter  and  pathetic  intensity  and  per- 
sistency in  detail.  Well  may  Dr.  Grosart  say 
that  "it  shocks  us  to-day,  though  so  far  off,  to 
think  ofi598toi6i6  onwards  covering  so  sorrow- 
ful and  humiliating  trials  for  so  finely  touched  a 
spirit  as  was  Dekker's";  but  I  think  as  well  as 
hope  that  there  is  no  sort  of  evidence  to  that 
surely  rather  improbable  as  well  as  deplorable 
effect.  It  may  be  "possible,"  but  it  is  barely 
possible,  that  some  "seven  years'  continuous  im- 
prisonment ' '  is  the  explanation  of  an  ambiguous 
phrase  which  is  now  incapable  of  any  certain 
solution,  and  capable  of  many  an  interpretation 
far  less  deplorable  than  this.  But  in  this  pro- 
fessedly comic  pamphlet  there  are  passages  as 
tragic,  if  not  as  powerful,  as  any  in  the  immortal 


loo         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

pages  of  Pickwick  and  Little  Dorrit  which  deal 
with  a  later  but  a  too  similar  phase  of  prison  dis- 
cipline and  tradition: 

The  thing  that  complained  was  a  man: — "Thy  days 
have  gone  over  thee  like  the  dreams  of  a  fool,  thy  nights 
like  the  watchings  of  a  madman. — Oh  sacred  liberty! 
with  how  little  devotion  do  men  come  into  thy  temples, 
when  they  cannot  bestow  upon  thee  too  much  honor! 
Thy  embracements  are  more  delicate  than  those  of  a 
young  bride  with  her  lover,  and  to  be  divorced  from 
thee  is  half  to  be  damned!  For  what  else  is  a  prison 
but  the  very  next  door  to  hell?  It  is  a  man's  grave, 
wherein  he  walks  alive:  it  is  a  sea  wherein  he  is  always 
shipwrackt:  it  is  a  lodging  built  out  of  the  world:  it  is 
a  wilderness  where  all  that  v/ander  up  and  down  grow 
wild,  and  all  that  come  into  it  are  devoured." 

In  Dekker's  next  pamphlet,  his  "Dream," 
there  are  perhaps  half  a  dozen  tolerably  smooth 
and  vigorous  couplets  immersed  among  many 
more  vacuous  and  vehement  in  the  intensity  of 
their  impotence  than  any  reader  and  admirer  of 
his  more  happily  inspired  verse  could  be  expected 
to  believe  without  evidence  adduced.  Of  imag- 
ination, faith,  or  fancy,  the  ugly  futility  of  this 
infernal  vision  has  not — unless  I  have  sought 
more  than  once  for  it  in  vain — a  single  saving 
trace  or  compensating  shadow. 

Two  years  after  he  had  tried  his  hand  at  an 
imitation  of  Nash,  Dekker  issued  the  first  of  the 
pamphlets  in  which  he  attempted  to  take  up  the 


THOMAS   DEKKER  loi 

succession  of  Robert  Greene  as  a  picaresque 
writer,  or  purveyor  of  guide-books  through  the 
reahns  of  rascaldom.  "The  Bellman  of  Lon- 
don," or  Rogue's  Horn-book,  begins  with  a  very- 
graceful  and  fanciful  description  of  the  quiet 
beauty  and  seclusion  of  a  country  retreat  in 
which  the  author  had  sought  refuge  from  the 
turmoil  and  f orgetf ulness  of  the  vices  of  the  city ; 
and  whence  he  was  driven  back  upon  London  by 
disgust  at  the  discovery  of  villany  as  elaborate 
and  roguery  as  abject  in  the  beggars  and  thieves 
of  the  country  as  the  most  squalid  recesses  of 
metropolitan  vice  or  crime  could  supply.  The 
narrative  of  this  accidental  discovery  is  very 
lively  and  spirited  in  its  straightforward  sim- 
plicity, and  the  subsequent  revelations  of  rascal- 
ity are  sometimes  humorous  as  well  as  curious: 
but  the  demand  for  such  literature  must  have 
been  singularly  persistent  to  evoke  a  sequel  to  this 
book  next  year, ' '  Lantern  and  Candle-light ;  or,  the 
Bellman's  Second  Night- walk,"  in  which  Dekker 
continues  his  account  of  vagrant  and  villanous 
society,  its  lawless  laws  and  its  unmannerly  man- 
ners; and  gives  the  reader  some  vivid  studies, 
interspersed  with  facile  rhetoric  and  interlarded 
with  indignant  declamation,  of  the  tricks  of 
horse-dealers  and  the  shifts  of  gypsies — or  "  moon- 
men"  as  he  calls  them;  a  race  which  he  regarded 


I02         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

with  a  mixture  of  angry  perplexity  and  passion- 
ate disgust.  "A  Strange  Horse-race"  between 
various  virtues  and  vices  gives  occasion  for  the 
display  of  some  allegoric  ingenuity  and  much 
indefatigable  but  fatiguing  pertinacity  in  the  ex- 
posure of  the  more  exalted  swindlers  of  the  age — 
the  crafty  bankrupts  who  anticipated  the  era  of 
the  Merdles  described  by  Dickens,  but  who  can 
hardly  have  done  much  immediate  injury  to  a 
capitalist  of  the  rank  of  Dekker.  Here  too  there 
are  glimpses  of  inventive  spirit  and  humorous  in- 
genuity; but  the  insufferable  iteration  of  jocose 
demonology  and  infernal  burlesque  might  tempt 
the  most  patient  and  the  most  curious  of  readers 
to  devote  the  author,  with  imprecations  or  in- 
vocations as  elaborate  as  his  own,  to  the  spirit- 
ual potentate  whose  "last  will  and  testament" 
is  transcribed  into  the  text  of  this  pamphlet. 

In  "The  Dead  Term"  such  a  reader  will  find 
himself  more  or  less  relieved  by  the  return  of  his 
author  to  a  more  terrene  and  realistic  sort  of 
allegory.  This  recriminatory  dialogue  between 
the  London  and  the  Westminster  of  1608  is  now 
and  then  rather  flatulent  in  its  reciprocity  of 
rhetoric,  but  is  enlivened  by  an  occasional  breath 
of  genuine  eloquence,  and  redeemed  by  touches  of 
historic  or  social  interest.  The  title  and  motto  of 
the  next  year's  pamphlet — "Work  for  Armourers ; 


THOMAS    DEKKER  103 

or,  the  Peace  is  Broken. — God  help  the  Poor,  the 
rich  can  shift" — were  presumably  designed  to 
attract  the  casual  reader,  by  what  would  now  be 
called  a  sensational  device,  to  consideration  of  the 
social  question  between  rich  and  poor — or,  as  he 
puts  it,  between  the  rival  queens.  Poverty  and 
Money.  The  forces  on  either  side  are  drawn  out 
and  arrayed  with  pathetic  ingenuity,  and  the  re- 
sult is  indicated  with  a  quaint  and  grim  effect  of 
humorous  if  indignant  resignation.  "The  Raven's 
Almanack"  of  the  same  year,  though  portentous 
in  its  menace  of  plague,  famine,  and  civil  war,  is 
less  noticeable  for  its  moral  and  religious  decla- 
mation than  for  its  rather  amusing  than  edifying 
anecdotes;  w^hich,  it  must  again  be  admitted,  in 
their  mixture  of  jocular  sensuality  with  some- 
what ferocious  humor,  rather  remind  us  of  King 
Louis  XI.  than  of  that  royal  novelist's  Italian 
models  or  precursors.  "A  Rod  for  Runaways" 
is  the  title  of  a  tract  which  must  have  somewhat 
perplexed  the  readers  who  came  to  it  for  practical 
counsel  or  suggestion,  seeing  that  the  very  title- 
page  calls  their  attention  to  the  fact  that,  "if  they 
look  back,  they  may  behold  many  fearful  judg- 
ments of  God,  sundry  ways  pronounced  upon  this 
city,  and  on  several  persons,  both  flying  from  it 
and  staying  in  it."  What  the  medical  gentleman 
to  whom  this  tract  was  dedicated  may  have 


I04        THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

thought  of  the  author's  logic  and  theology,  we 
can  only  conjecture.  But  even  in  this  little  pam- 
phlet there  are  anecdotes  and  details  which  would 
repay  the  notice  of  a  social  historian  as  curious  in 
his  research  and  as  studious  in  his  condescension 
as  Macaulay. 

A  prayer-book  written  or  compiled  by  a  poet 
of  Dekker's  rank  in  Dekker's  age  would  have  some 
interest  for  the  reader  of  a  later  generation  even 
if  it  had  not  the  literary  charm  which  distin- 
guishes the  little  volume  of  devotions  now  reprint- 
ed from  a  single  and  an  imperfect  copy.  We  can- 
not be  too  grateful  for  the  good-fortune  and  the 
generous  care  to  which  we  are  indebted  for  this 
revelation  of  a  work  of  genius  so  curious  and  so 
delightful  that  the  most  fanatical  of  atheists  or 
agnostics,  the  hardest  and  the  driest  of  philoso- 
phers, might  be  moved  and  fascinated  by  the 
exquisite  simplicity  of  its  beauty.  Hardly  even 
in  those  almost  incomparable  collects  which 
Macaulay  so  aptly  compared  with  the  sonnets  of 
Milton  shall  we  find  sentences  or  passages  more 
perfect  in  their  union  of  literary  grace  with  ardent 
sincerity  than  here.  Quaint  as  are  several  of  the 
prayers  in  the  professional  particulars  of  their 
respective  appeals,  this  quaintncss  has  nothing 
of  irreverence  or  incongruity:  and  the  subtle 
simplicity  of  cadence  in  the  rhythmic  movement 


THOMAS   DEKKER  105 

of  the  style  is  so  nearly  impeccable  that  we  are 
perplexed  to  understand  how  so  exquisite  an  ear 
as  was  Dekker's  at  its  best  can  have  been  tolerant 
of  such  discord  or  insensible  to  such  collapse  as  so 
often  disappoints  or  shocks  us  in  the  hastier  and 
cruder  passages  of  his  faltering  and  fluctuating 
verse.  The  prayer  for  a  soldier  going  to  battle 
and  his  thanksgiving  after  victory  are  as  noble 
in  the  dignity  of  their  devotion  as  the  prayers  for 
a  woman  in  travail  and  "for  them  that  visit  the 
sick"  are  delicate  and  earnest  in  their  tenderness. 
The  prayer  for  a  prisoner  is  too  beautiful  to  stand 
in  need  of  the  additional  and  pathetic  interest 
which  it  derives  from  the  fact  of  its  author's  re- 
peated experience  of  the  misery  it  expresses  with 
such  piteous  yet  such  manful  resignation.  The 
style  of  these  faultlessly  simple  devotions  is  al- 
most grotesquely  set  off  by  the  relief  of  a  com- 
parison with  the  bloated  bombast  and  flatulent 
pedantry  of  a  prayer  by  the  late  Queen  Elizabeth 
which  Dekker  has  transcribed  into  his  text — it  is 
hardly  possible  to  suppose,  without  perception 
of  the  contrast  between  its  hideous  jargon  and  the 
refined  purity  of  his  own  melodious  English.  The 
prayer  for  the  Council  is  singularly  noble  in  the 
eloquence  of  its  patriotism:  the  prayer  for  the 
country  is  simply  magnificent  in  the  austere  music 
of  its  fervent  cadences :  the  prayer  in  time  of  civil 


io6         THE   AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

war  is  so  passionate  in  its  cry  for  deliverance  from 
all  danger  of  the  miseries  then  or  lately  afflicting 
the  continent  that  it  might  well  have  been  put 
up  by  a  loyal  patriot  in  the  very  heat  of  the  great 
war  which  Dekker  might  have  lived  to  see  break 
out  in  his  own  country.  The  prayer  for  the  even- 
ing is  so  beautiful  as  to  double  our  regret  for  the 
deplorable  mutilation  which  has  deprived  us  of 
all  but  the  opening  of  the  morning  prayer.^  The 
feathers  fallen  from  the  wings  of  these  "Four 
Birds  of  Noah's  Ark"  would  be  worth  more  to 
the  literary  ornithologist  than  whole  flocks  of 
such  "tame  villatic  fowl"  as  people  the  ordinary 
coops  and  hen-roosts  of  devotional  literature. 

One  work  only  of  Dekker's  too  often  over- 
tasked and  heavy-laden  genius  remains  to  be 
noticed:  it  is  one  which  gives  him  a  high  place 
forever  among  English  humorists.  No  sooner 
has  the  reader  run  his  eye  over  the  first  three  or 
four  pages  than  he  feels  himself,  with  delight  and 
astonishment,  in  the  company  of  a  writer  whose 
genius  is  akin  at  once  to  Goldsmith's  and  to 
Thackeray's ;  a  writer  whose  style  is  so  pure  and 
vigorous,  so  lucid  and  straightforward,  that  we 

*  A  noticeable  instance  of  the  use  of  a  coinmon  word  in 
the  original  and  obsolete  sense  of  its  derivation  may  be 
cited  from  the  unfortunately  truncated  and  scanty  frag- 
ment of  a  prayer  for  the  court:  "Oh  Lord,  be  thou  a  hus- 
band" (house-band)  "  to  that  great  household  of  our  King." 


THOMAS   DEKKER  107 

seem  to  have  already  entered  upon  the  best  age 
of  Enghsh  prose.  Had  Air.  Matthew  Arnold,  in- 
stead of  digging  in  Chapman  for  preposterous  bar- 
barisms and  eccentricities  of  pedantry,  chanced 
to  light  upon  this  little  treatise,  or  had  he  con- 
descended to  glance  over  Daniel's  compact  and 
admirable  "Defence  of  Rhyme,"  he  would  have 
found  in  writers  of  the  despised  Shakespearean 
epoch  much  more  than  a  foretaste  of  those  excel- 
lent qualities  which  he  imagined  to  have  been 
first  imported  into  our  literature  by  waiters  of  the 
age  of  Dry  den.  The  dialogue  of  the  very  first 
couple  introduced  with  such  skilful  simplicity  of 
presentation  at  the  opening  of  Dekker's  pamphlet 
is  worthy  of  Sterne:  the  visit  of  the  gossip  or 
kinswoman  in  the  second  chapter  is  worthy  of 
Moliere,  and  the  humors  of  the  monthly  nurse  in 
the  third  are  worthy  of  Dickens,  The  lamenta- 
tions of  the  lady  for  the  decay  of  her  health  and 
beauty  in  consequence  of  her  obsequious  hus- 
band's alleged  neglect,  "no  more  like  the  woman 
I  was  than  an  apple  is  like  an  oyster";  the  de- 
scription of  the  poor  man  making  her  broth  with 
his  own  hands,  jeered  at  by  the  maids  and 
trampled  underfoot  by  Mrs.  Gamp;  the  prepara- 
tions for  the  christening  supper  and  the  pre- 
liminary feast  of  scandal — are  full  of  such  bright 
and  rich  humor  as  to  recall  even  the  creator 


io8         THE    AGE   OF    SHAKESPEARE 

of  Dogberry  and  Mrs.  Quickly.  It  is  of  Shake- 
speare again  that  we  are  reminded  in  the  next 
chapter,  by  the  description  of  the  equipage  to 
which  the  husband  of  "a  woman  that  hath  a 
charge  of  children"  is  reduced  when  he  has  to 
ride  to  the  assizes  in  sorrier  plight  than  Petruchio 
rode  in  to  his  wedding ;  the  details  remind  us  also 
of  Balzac  in  the  minute  and  grotesque  intensity 
of  their  industrious  realism :  but  the  scene  on  his 
return  reminds  us  rather  of  Thackeray  at  the  best 
of  his  bitterest  mood — the  terrible  painter  of 
Mrs.  Mackenzie  and  Mrs.  General  Baynes.  "The 
humor  of  a  woman  that  marries  her  inferior  by 
birth"  deals  with  more  serious  matters  in  a  style 
not  unworthy  of  Boccaccio;  and  no  comedy  of 
the  time — Shakespeare's  always  excepted — has  a 
scene  in  it  of  richer  and  more  original  humor  than 
brightens  the  narrative  which  relates  the  woes 
of  the  husband  who  invites  his  friends  to  dinner 
and  finds  everything  under  lock  and  key.  Hardly 
in  any  of  Dekker's  plays  is  the  comic  dialogue  so 
masterly  as  here — so  vivid  and  so  vigorous  in  its 
life-like  ease  and  spontaneity.  But  there  is  not 
one  of  the  fifteen  chapters,  devoted  each  to  the 
description  of  some  fresh  "humor,"  which  would 
not  deserve,  did  space  and  time  allow  of  it,  a 
separate  note  of  commentary.  The  book  is 
simply  one  of  the  very  finest  examples  of  humor- 


THOMAS   DEKKER  109 

ous  literature,  touched  now  and  then  with  serious 
and  even  tragic  effect,  that  can  be  found  in  any 
language;  it  is  generally  and  comparatively  re- 
markable for  its  freedom  from  all  real  coarse- 
ness or  brutality,  though  the  inevitable  change 
of  manners  between  Shakespeare's  time  and  our 
own  may  make  some  passages  or  episodes  seem 
now  and  then  somewhat  over-particular  in  plain 
speaking  or  detail.  But  a  healthier,  manlier, 
more  thoroughly  good-natured  and  good -hu- 
mored book  was  never  written ;  nor  one  in  which 
the  author's  real  and  respectful  regard  for  wom- 
anhood was  more  perceptible  through  the  veil 
of  a  satire  more  pure  from  bitterness  and  more 
honest  in  design. 

The  list  of  works  over  which  we  have  now 
glanced  is  surely  not  inconsiderable;  and  yet 
the  surviving  productions  of  Dekker's  genius  or 
necessity  are  but  part  of  the  labors  of  his  life. 
If  he  wanted — as  undoubtedly  he  would  seem  to 
have  wanted — that  "infinite  capacity  for  taking 
pains"  which  Carlyle  professed  to  regard  as  the 
synonyme  of  genius,  he  was  at  least  not  deficient 
in  that  rough-and-ready  diligence  which  is  ha- 
bitually in  harness,  and  cheerfully  or  resignedly 
prepared  for  the  day's  work.  The  names  of 
his  lost  plays — all  generally  suggestive  of  some 
true   dramatic   interest,   now   graver  and   now 


no         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

lighter — are  too  numerous  to  transcribe:  but  one 
at  least  of  them  must  excite  unspeakable  amaze- 
ment as  well  as  indiscreet  curiosity  in  every 
reader  of  Ariosto  or  La  Fontaine  who  comes  in 
the  course  of  the  catalogue  upon  such  a  title  as 
"Jocondo  and  Astolfo."  How  on  earth  the 
famous  story  of  Giocondo  could  possibly  be 
adapted  for  representation  on  the  public  stage  of 
Shakespearean  London  is  a  mystery  which  the 
execrable  cook  of  the  execrable  Warburton  has 
left  forever  insoluble  and  inconceivable:  for  to 
that  female  fiend,  the  object  of  Sir  Walter  Scott's 
antiquarian  imprecations,  we  owe,  unless  my 
memory  misguides  me,  the  loss  of  this  among 
other  irredeemable  treasures. 

To  do  justice  upon  the  faults  of  this  poet  is 
easy  for  any  sciolist :  to  do  justice  to  his  merits  is 
less  easy  for  the  most  competent  scholar  and  the 
most  appreciative  critic.  In  despite  of  his  rare 
occasional  spurts  or  outbreaks  of  self-assertion  or 
of  satire,  he  seems  to  stand  before  us  a  man 
of  gentle,  modest,  shiftless,  and  careless  nature, 
irritable  and  placable,  eager  and  unsteady,  full 
of  excitable  kindliness  and  deficient  in  strenuous 
principle;  loving  the  art  which  he  professionally 
followed,  and  enjoying  the  work  which  he  occa- 
sionally neglected.  There  is  no  unpoetic  note  in 
his  best  poetry  such  as  there  is  too  often — nay, 


THOMAS    DEKKER  iii 

too  constantly  —  in  the  severer  work  and  the 
stronger  genius  of  Ben  Jonson.  What  he  might 
have  done  under  happier  auspices,  or  with  a 
tougher  fibre  of  resolution  and  perseverance  in 
his  character,  it  is  waste  of  time  and  thought  for 
his  most  sympathetic  and  compassionate  ad- 
mirers to  assume  or  to  conjecture:  what  he  has 
done,  with  all  its  shortcomings  and  infirmities,  is 
enough  to  secure  for  him  a  distinct  and  honorable 
place  among  the  humorists  and  the  poets  of  his 
country. 


JOHN   MARSTON 

If  justice  has  never  been  done,  either  in  his  own 
day  or  in  any  after  age,  to  a  poet  of  real  genius 
and  original  powers,  it  will  generally  be  presumed, 
with  more  or  less  fairness  or  unfairness,  that  this 
is  in  great  part  his  own  fault.  Some  perversity  or 
obliquity  will  be  suspected,  even  if  no  positive 
infirmity  or  deformity  can  be  detected,  in  his 
intelligence  or  in  his  temperament :  some  taint  or 
some  flaw  will  be  assumed  to  affect  and  to  vitiate 
his  creative  instinct  or  his  spiritual  reason.  And 
in  the  case  of  John  Marston,  the  friend  and  foe  of 
Ben  Jonson,  the  fierce  and  foul-mouthed  satirist, 
the  ambitious  and  overweening  tragedian,  the 
scornful  and  passionate  humorist,  it  is  easy  for 
the  shallowest  and  least  appreciative  reader  to 
perceive  the  nature  and  to  estimate  the  weight  of 
such  drawbacks  or  impediments  as  have  so  long 
and  so  seriously  interfered  with  the  due  recogni- 
tion of  an  independent  and  remarkable  poet.  The 
praise  and  the  blame,  the  admiration  and  the  dis- 
taste excited  by  his  works,  are  equally  just,  but 


JOHN   MARSTON  113 

are  seemingly  incompatible:  the  epithets  most 
exactly  appropriate  to  the  style  of  one  scene,  one 
page,  one  speech  in  a  scene  or  one  passage  in  a 
speech,  are  most  ludicrously  inapplicable  to  the 
next.  An  anthology  of  such  noble  and  beautiful 
excerpts  might  be  collected  from  his  plays,  that 
the  reader  who  should  make  his  first  acquaintance 
with  this  poet  through  the  deceptive  means  of  so 
flattering  an  introduction  would  be  justified  in 
supposing  that  he  had  fallen  in  with  a  tragic 
dramatist  of  the  very  highest  order — with  a  new 
candidate  for  a  station  in  the  very  foremost  rank 
of  English  poets.  And  if  the  evil  star  which 
seems  generally  to  have  presided  over  the  literary 
fortunes  of  John  Marston  should  misguide  the 
student,  on  first  opening  a  volume  of  his  works, 
into  some  such  arid  or  miry  tract  of  wilderness 
as  too  frequently  deforms  the  face  of  his  uneven 
and  irregular  demesne,  the  inevitable  sense  of 
disappointment  and  repulsion  which  must  im- 
mediately ensue  will  too  probably  discourage  a 
casual  explorer  from  any  renewal  of  his  research. 
Two  of  the  epithets  which  Ben  Jonson,  in  his 
elaborate  attack  on  Marston,  selected  for  ridicule 
as  characteristically  grotesque  instances  of  af- 
fected and  infelicitous  innovation — but  which 
nevertheless  have  taken  root  in  the  language,  and 
practically  justified  their  adoption — describe  as 


114         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

happily  as  any  that  could  be  chosen  to  describe 
the  better  and  the  worse  quality  of  his  early 
tragic  and  satiric  style.  These  words  are  "stren- 
uous" and  "clumsy."  It  is  perpetually,  inde- 
fatigably,  and  fatiguingly  strenuous;  it  is  too 
often  vehemently,  emphatically,  and  laboriously 
clumsy.  But  at  its  best,  when  the  clumsy  and 
ponderous  incompetence  of  expression  which  dis- 
figures it  is  supplanted  by  a  strenuous  felicity  of 
ardent  and  triumphant  aspiration,  it  has  notes 
and  touches  in  the  compass  of  its  course  not  un- 
worthy of  Webster  or  Toumeur  or  even  Shake- 
speare himself.  Its  occasionally  exquisite  deli- 
cacy is  as  remarkable  as  its  more  frequent  excess 
of  coarseness,  awkwardness,  or  violent  and  elab- 
orate extravagance.  No  sooner  has  he  said  any- 
thing especially  beautiful,  pathetic,  or  sublime, 
than  the  evil  genius  must  needs  take  his  turn, 
exact  as  it  were  the  forfeit  of  his  bond,  impel 
the  poet  into  some  sheer  perversity,  deface  the 
flow  and  form  of  the  verse  with  some  preposter- 
ous crudity  or  flatulence  of  phrase  which  would 
discredit  the  most  incapable  or  the  most  fantastic 
novice.  And  the  worst  of  it  all  is  that  he  limps 
or  stumbles  with  either  foot  alternately.  At  one 
moment  he  exaggerates  the  license  of  artificial 
rhetoric,  the  strain  and  swell  of  the  most  high- 
flown  and  hyperbolical  poetic  diction ;  at  the  next, 


I 


JOHN   MARSTON  115 

he  falls  flat  upon  the  naked  level  of  insignificant 
or  offensive  realism. 

These  are  no  slight  charges;  and  it  is  impos- 
sible for  any  just  or  sober  judgment  to  acquit 
John  Marston  of  the  impeachment  conveyed  in 
them.  The  answer  to  it  is  practical  and  simple : 
it  is  that  his  merits  are  great  enough  to  outweigh 
and  overshadow  them  all.  Even  if  his  claim  to 
remembrance  were  merely  dependent  on  the 
value  of  single  passages,  this  would  suffice  to 
secure  him  his  place  of  honor  in  the  train  of 
Shakespeare.  If  his  most  ambitious  efforts  at 
portraiture  of  character  are  often  faulty  at  once 
in  color  and  in  outline,  some  of  his  slighter 
sketches  have  a  freshness  and  tenderness  of 
beauty  which  may  well  atone  for  the  gravest  of 
his  certainly  not  infrequent  offences.  The  sweet 
constancy  and  gentle  fortitude  of  a  Beatrice  and 
a  Mellida  remain  in  the  memory  more  clearly, 
leave  a  more  life-like  impression  of  truth  on  the 
reader's  mind,  than  the  light-headed  profligacy 
and  passionate  instability  of  such  brainless  and 
blood-thirsty  wantons  as  Franceschina  and  Isa- 
bella. In  fact,  the  better  characters  in  Marston 's 
plays  are  better  drawn,  less  conventional,  more 
vivid  and  more  human  than  those  of  the  baser 
sort.  Whatever  of  moral  credit  may  be  due  to 
a  dramatist  who  paints  virtue  better  than  vice, 


ii6         THE   AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

and  has  a  happier  hand  at  a  hero's  Hkeness  than 
at  a  villain's,  must  unquestionably  be  assigned 
to  the  author  of  "Antonio  and  Mellida."  Piero, 
the  tyrant  and  traitor,  is  little  more  than  a  mere 
stage  property:  like  Mendoza  in  "The  Malcon- 
tent" and  Syphax  in  "Sophonisba,"  he  would  be 
a  portentous  ruffian  if  he  had  a  little  more  life 
in  him;  he  has  to  do  the  deeds  and  express  the 
emotions  of  a  most  bloody  and  crafty  miscreant ; 
but  it  is  only  now  and  then  that  we  catch  the 
accent  of  a  real  man  in  his  tones  of  cajolery  or 
menace,  dissimulation  or  triumph.  Andrugio, 
the  venerable  and  heroic  victim  of  his  craft  and 
cruelty,  is  a  figure  not  less  living  and  actual  than 
stately  and  impressive :  the  changes  of  mood  from 
meditation  to  passion,  from  resignation  to  re- 
volt, from  tenderness  to  resolution,  which  mark 
the  development  of  the  character  with  the  proc- 
ess of  the  action,  though  painted  rather  broadly 
than  subtly  and  with  more  of  vigor  than  of  care, 
show  just  such  power  of  hand  and  sincerity  of 
instinct  as  we  fail  to  find  in  the  hot  and  glaring 
colors  of  his  rival's  monotonous  ruffianism. 
Again,  in  "The  Wonder  of  Women,"  the  majestic 
figures  of  Massinissa,  Gelosso,  and  Sophonisba 
stand  out  in  clearer  relief  than  the  traitors  of  the 
senate,  the  lecherous  malignity  of  Syphax,  or  the 
monstrous  profile  of  the  sorceress  Erich tho.     In 


JOHN   MARSTOxM  117 

this  labored  and  ambitious  tragedy,  as  in  the  two 
parts  of  "Antonio  and  Mellida,"  we  see  the  poet 
at  his  best — and  also  at  his  worst.  A  vehement 
and  resolute  desire  to  give  weight  to  every  line 
and  emphasis  to  every  phrase  has  too  often  mis- 
led him  into  such  brakes  and  jungles  of  crabbed 
and  convulsive  bombast,  of  stiff  and  tortuous 
exuberance,  that  the  reader  in  struggling  through 
some  of  the  scenes  and  speeches  feels  as  though 
he  were  compelled  to  push  his  way  through  a 
cactus  hedge:  the  hot  and  heavy  blossoms  of 
rhetoric  blaze  and  glare  out  of  a  thickset  fence  of 
jagged  barbarisms  and  exotic  monstrosities  of 
metaphor.  The  straining  and  sputtering  dec- 
lamation of  narrative  and  oratory  scarcely  suc- 
ceeds in  expressing  through  a  dozen  quaint  and 
far-fetched  words  or  phrases  what  two  or  three 
of  the  simplest  would  easily  and  amply  have 
sufificed  to  convey.  But  when  the  poet  is  content 
to  deliver  his  message  like  a  man  of  this  world, 
we  discover  with  mingled  satisfaction,  astonish- 
ment, and  irritation  that  he  can  write  when  he 
pleases  in  a  style  of  the  purest  and  noblest 
simplicity;  that  he  can  make  his  characters  con- 
verse in  a  language  worthy  of  Sophocles  when  he 
does  not  prefer  to  make  them  stutter  in  a  dialect 
worthy  of  Lycophron.  And  in  the  tragedy  of 
"Sophonisba"  the  display  of  this  happy  capac- 


ii8         THE   AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

ity  is  happily  reserved  for  the  crowning  scene 
of  the  poem.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  any- 
where a  more  preposterous  or  disjointed  piece  of 
jargon  than  the  speech  of  Asdrubal  at  the  close 
of  the  second  act: 

Brook  open  scorn,  faint  powers! — 
Make   good   the   camp! — No,    fly! — yes,    what? — wild 

rage ! — 
To  be  a  prosperous  villain!  yet  some  heat,  some  hold; 
But  to  bum  temples,  and  yet  freeze,  O  cold! 
Give  me  some  health ;  now  your  blood  sinks :  thus  deeds 
111  nourished  rot:  without  Jove  nought  succeeds. 

And  yet  this  passage  occurs  in  a  poem  which 
contains  such  a  passage  as  the  following: 

And  now  with  undismayed  resolve  behold, 

To  save  you — you — for  hotior  and  just  faith 

Are  most  true  gods,  which  we  should  much  adore — 

With  even  disdainful  vigor  I  give  up 

An  abhorred  life! — Yovi  have  been  good  to  me. 

And  I  do  thank  thee,  heaven.     O  my  stars, 

I  bless  your  goodness,  that  with  breast  unstained, 

Faith  ptire,  a  virgin  wife,  tried  to  my  glory, 

I  die,  of  female  faith  the  long-lived  story; 

Sectire  from  bondage  and  all  servile  harms. 

But  more,  most  happy  in  my  husband's  arms. 

The  lofty  sweetness,  the  proud  pathos,  the 
sonorous  simplicity  of  these  most  noble  verses 
might  scarcely  suffice  to  attest  the  poet's  posses- 
sion of  any  strong  dramatic  faculty.     But  the 


JOHN   MARSTON  119 

scene  immediately  preceding  bears  evidence  of  a 
capacity  for  terse  and  rigorous  brevity  of  dialogue 
in  a  style  as  curt  and  condensed  as  that  of  Tacitus 
or  Dante: 

Sophonisba.   What  unjust  grief    afflicts    my  worthy 
lord? 

Massinissa.  Thank  me,  ye  gods,  with  much  behold- 
ingness ; 
For,  mark,  I  do  not  curse  you. 

Sophonisba.  Tell  me,  sweet, 

The  cause  of  thy  much  anguish. 

Massinissa.  Ha,  the  cause? 

Let's  see;  wreathe  back  thine  arms,  bend  down  thy 

neck. 
Practise  base  prayers,   make  fit  thyself  for  bondage. 

Sophonisba.  Bondage! 

Massinissa.  Bondage:  Roman  bondage. 

Sophonisba.  No,  no!^ 

Massinissa.  How  then  have  I  vowed  well  to  Scipio  ? 

Sophonisba.  How  then  to  Sophonisba  ? 

Massinissa.  Right:  which  way 

Run  mad?  impossible  distraction ! ^ 

*  This  verse,  unmusical  to  an  English  ear,  is  good  Italian 
metre;  possibly  an  intentional  and  deliberate  example  of  the 
poet's  Italian  predilections,  and  if  so  certainly  a  less  irra- 
tional and  inexplicable  one  than  the  intrusion  of  some 
villanously  bad  Italian  lines  and  phrases  into  the  text  of 
"Antonio  and  Mellida." 

^  In  other  words — intolerable  or  unimaginable  division  or 
divulsion  of  mind  and  spirit  between  two  contending  calls  of 
honor,  two  irreconcilable  claims  of  duty.  Modern  editors 
of  this  great  scene  have  broken  up  the  line  into  pieces, 
marked  or  divided  by  superfluous  dashes  and  points  of 
exclamation.  Campbell,  who  had  the  good  taste  to  confute 
his  own  depreciatory  criticism  of  Marston  by  including  the 


120        THE   AGE    01^   SHAKESPEARE 

Sophonisha.  Dear  lord,  thy  patience ;  let  it  maze  all 
power, 
And  list  to  her  in  whose  sole  heart  it  rests 
To  keep  thy  faith  upright. 

Massinissa.  Wilt  thou  be  slaved? 

Sophonisba.  No;  free. 

Massinissa.  How  then  keep  I  my  faith  ? 

Sophonisba.  My  death 

Gives  help  to  all.     From  Rome  so  rest  we  free: 
So  brought  to  Scipio,  faith  is  kept  in  thee. 

Massinissa.   Thou  darest  not  die!  —  Some  wine. — 
Thou  darest  not  die! 

Sophonisba.  How  near  was  I  unto  the  curse  of  man, 

Joy! 

How  like  was  I  yet  once  to  have  been  glad! 
He  that  ne'er  laughed  may  with  a  constant  face 
Contemn  Jove's  frown.     Happiness  makes  us  base. 

The  man  or  the  boy  does  not  seem  to  me 
enviable  who  can  read  or  remember  these  verses 
without  a  thrill.  In  sheer  force  of  concision  they 
recall  the  manner  of  Alfieri ;  but  that  noble  tragic 
writer  could  hardly  have  put  such  fervor  of 
austere  passion  into  the  rigid  utterance,  or  touch- 
ed the  note  of  emotion  with  such  a  glowing  depth 
of  rapture.  That  "bitter  and  severe  delight" — if 
I  may  borrow  the  superb  phrase  of  Landor — 
which  inspires  and  sustains  the  imperial  pride  of 
self-immolation  might  have  found  in  his  dramatic 

passage  among  his  "Selections,"  was  the  first,  as  far  as  I 
know,  to  adopt  this  erroneous  and  rather  spasmodic 
punctuation. 


JOHN   MARSTON  121 

dialect  an  expression  as  terse  and  as  sincere:  it 
could  hardly  have  clothed  itself  with  such  majes- 
tic and  radiant  solemnity  of  living  and  breathing 
verse.  The  rapid  elliptic  method  of  amoebaean 
dialogue  is  more  in  his  manner  than  in  any 
English  poet's  known  to  me  except  the  writer  of 
this  scene;  but  indeed  Marston  is  in  more  points 
than  one  the  most  Italian  of  our  dramatists.  His 
highest  tone  of  serious  poetry  has  in  it,  like 
Alfieri's,  a  note  of  self-conscious  stoicism  and 
somewhat  arrogant  self-control ;  while  as  a  comic 
writer  he  is  but  too  apt,  like  too  many  transalpine 
wits,  to  mistake  filth  for  fun,  and  to  measure  the 
neatness  of  a  joke  by  its  nastiness.  Dirt  for 
dirt's  sake  has  never  been  the  apparent  aim  of 
any  great  English  humorist  who  had  not  about 
him  some  unmistakable  touch  of  disease — some 
inheritance  of  evil  or  of  suffering  like  the  con- 
genital brain-sickness  of  Swift  or  the  morbid 
infirmity  of  Sterne.  A  poet  of  so  high  an  order 
as  the  author  of  "Sophonisba"  could  hardly  fail 
to  be  in  general  a  healthier  \\Titer  than  such  as 
these;  but  it  cannot  be  denied  that  he  seems 
to  have  been  somewhat  inclined  to  accept  the 
illogical  inference  which  would  argue  that  be- 
cause some  wit  is  dirty  all  dirt  must  be  w^itty — 
because  humor  may  sometimes  be  indecent,  in- 
decency must  always  be  humorous.  "The  clar- 
9 


122         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

tier  the  cosier"  was  an  old  proverb  among  the 
northern  peasantry  while  yet  recalcitrant  against 
the  inroads  of  sanitary  reform:  "the  dirtier  the 
droller"  would  seem  to  have  been  practically  the 
no  less  irrational  motto  of  many  not  otherwise 
unadmirable  comic  writers.  It  does  happen  that 
the  drollest  character  in  all  Marston's  plays  is 
also  the  most  offensive  in  his  language  —  "the 
foulest-mouthed  profane  railing  brother";  but 
the  drollest  passages  in  the  whole  part  are  those 
that  least  want  washing.  How  far  the  example  of 
Ben  Jonson  may  have  influenced  or  encouraged 
Marston  in  the  indulgence  of  this  unlovely  pro- 
pensity can  only  be  conjectured;  it  is  certain  that 
no  third  writer  of  the  time,  however  given  to 
levity  of  speech  or  audacity  in  the  selection 
of  a  subject,  was  so  prone — in  Shakespeare's 
phrase  —  to  "talk  greasily"  as  the  authors  of 
"Bartholomew  Fair"  and  "The  Dutch  Cour- 
tesan." 

In  the  two  parts  of  his  earlier  tragedy  the 
interest  is  perhaps,  on  the  whole,  rather  better 
sustained  than  in  "The  Wonder  of  Women."  The 
prologue  to  "Antonio's  Revenge"  (the  second 
part  of  the  "Historic  of  Antonio  and  Mellida") 
has  enjoyed  the  double  correlative  honor  of 
ardent  appreciation  by  Lamb  and  responsive 
depreciation  by  Gilford.      Its  eccentricities  and 


JOHN   MARSTON  123 

perversities  of  phrase'  may  be  no  less  noticeable, 
but  should  assuredly  be  accounted  less  memo- 
rable, than  its  profound  and  impassioned  fervor 
of  grave  and  eloquent  harmony.  Strange,  way- 
ward and  savage  as  is  the  all  but  impossible  story, 
rude  and  crude  and  crabbed  as  is  the  pedantically 
exuberant  language  of  these  plays,  there  are 
touches  in  them  of  such  terrible  beauty  and  such 
terrible  pathos  as  to  convince  any  competent 
reader  that  they  deserve  the  tribute  of  such 
praise  and  such  dispraise.  The  youngest  student 
of  Lamb's  "Specimens"  can  hardly  fail  to  rec- 
ognize this  when  he  compares  the  vivid  and 
piercing  description  of  the  death  of  Mellida  with 
the  fearful  and  supernatural  impression  of  the 
scene  which  brings  or  thrusts  before  us  the  im- 
molation of  the  child,  her  brother. 

The  labored  eccentricity  of  style  which  sig- 
nalizes and  disfigures  the  three  chief  tragedies  or 
tragic  poems  of  Marston  is  tempered  and  subdued 
to  a  soberer  tone  of  taste  and  a  more  rational 
choice  of  expression  in  his  less  ambitious  and  less 
unequal  works.  It  is  almost  impossible  to  imagine 
any  insertion  or  addition  from  the  hand  of  Web- 
ster which  would  not  be  at  once  obvious  to  any 
reader  in  the  text  of  "Sophonisba"  or  in  either 

'  One  strange  phrase  in  the  very  first  line  is  surely  a 
palpable  misprint — ramps  for  cramps. 


124         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

part  of  "Antonio  and  Mellida."  Their  fierce 
and  irregular  magnificence,  their  feverish  and 
strenuous  intemperance  of  rhetoric,  would  have 
been  too  glaringly  in  contrast  with  the  sublime 
purity  of  the  greater  poet's  thought  and  style 
In  the  tragicomedy  of  "The  Malcontent,"  pub- 
lished two  years  later  than  the  earlier  and  two 
years  earlier  than  the  later  of  these  poems,  if  the 
tone  of  feeling  is  but  little  changed  or  softened, 
the  language  is  duly  clarified  and  simplified. 
"The  Malcontent,  (augmented)  by  Marston,  with 
the  additions  written  by  John  Webster,"  is  as 
coherent,  as  harmonious,  as  much  of  a  piece 
throughout,  as  was  the  text  of  the  play  in  its 
earlier  state.  Not  all  the  conscientious  art  and 
skill  of  Webster  could  have  given  this  uniformity 
to  a  work  in  which  the  original  design  and  ex- 
ecution had  been  less  in  keeping  with  the  bent 
of  his  own  genius  and  the  accent  of  his  natural 
style.  Sad  and  stem,  not  unhopeful  or  unloving, 
the  spirit  of  this  poem  is  more  in  harmony  with 
that  of  Webster's  later  tragedies  than  with  that  of 
Marston's  previous  plays;  its  accent  is  sardonic 
rather  than  pessimistic,  ironical  rather  than  de- 
spondent. The  plot  is  neither  well  conceived 
nor  well  constructed ;  the  catastrophe  is  little  less 
than  absurd,  especially  from  the  ethical  or  moral 
point  of  view ;  the  characters  are  thinly  sketched, 


JOHN   MARSTON  125 

the  situations  at  once  forced  and  conventional; 
there  are  few  sorrier  or  stranger  figures  in  serious 
fiction  than  that  of  the  penitent  usurper  when 
he  takes  to  his  arms  his  repentant  wife,  together 
with  one  of  her  two  paramours,  in  a  sudden 
rapture  of  forgiving  affection;  the  part  which 
gives  the  play  its  name  is  the  only  one  drawn 
with  any  firmness  of  outline,  unless  we  except 
that  of  the  malignant  and  distempered  old  para- 
site; but  there  is  a  certain  interest  in  the  awk- 
ward evolution  of  the  story,  and  there  are  scenes 
and  passages  of  singular  power  and  beauty  which 
would  suffice  to  redeem  the  whole  work  from 
condemnation  or  oblivion,  even  though  it  had 
not  the  saving  salt  in  it  of  an  earnest  and  evi- 
dent sincerity.  The  brooding  anger,  the  resentful 
resignation,  the  impatient  spirit  of  endurance, 
the  bitter  passion  of  disdain,  which  animate  the 
utterance  and  direct  the  action  of  the  hero,  are 
something  more  than  dramatically  appropriate; 
it  is  as  obvious  that  these  are  the  mainsprings 
of  the  poet's  own  ambitious  and  dissatisfied  in- 
telligence, sullen  in  its  reluctant  submission  and 
ardent  in  its  implacable  appeal,  as  that  his  ear- 
lier undramatic  satires  were  the  tumultuous  and 
turbid  ebullitions  of  a  mood  as  morbid,  as  rest- 
less, and  as  honest.  Coarse,  rough,  and  fierce  as 
those  satires  are,  inferior  alike  to  Hall's  in  finish 


126        THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

of  verse  and  to  Donne's  in  weight  of  matter,  it 
seems  to  me  that  Dr.  Grosart,  their  first  careful 
and  critical  editor,  is  right  in  claiming  for  them 
equal  if  not  superior  credit  on  the  score  of  ear- 
nestness. The  crude  ferocity  of  their  invective 
has  about  it  a  savor  of  honesty  which  atones  for 
many  defects  of  literary  taste  and  executive  art ; 
and  after  a  more  thorough  study  than  such  rude 
and  unattractive  work  seems  at  first  to  require  or 
to  deserve,  the  moral  and  intellectual  impression 
of  the  whole  will  not  improbably  be  far  more 
favorable  than  one  resulting  from  a  cursory 
survey  or  derived  from  a  casual  selection  of 
excerpts.  They  bring  no  manner  of  support  to 
a  monstrous  and  preposterous  imputation  which 
has  been  cast  upon  their  author;  the  charge  of 
having  been  concerned  in  a  miserably  malignant 
and  stupid  attempt  at  satire  under  the  form  of  a 
formless  and  worthless  drama  called  "Histrio- 
mastix";^  though  his  partnership  in  another 
anonymous  play — a  semi-romantic  semi-satirical 
comedy  called  "Jack  Drum's  Entertainment" — 
is  very  much  more  plausibly  supportable  by  com- 

'  This  abortion  of  letters  is  such  a  very  moon-calf,  begotten 
by  malice  on  idiocy,  that  no  human  creature  above  the  in- 
tellectual level  of  its  author  will  ever  dream  of  attempting 
to  decipher  the  insignificant  significance  which  may  possibly 
— though  improbably — lie  latent  under  the  opaque  veil  of 
its  inarticulate  virulence. 


JOHN   MARSTON  127 

parison  of  special  phrases  as  well  as  of  general 
style  with  sundry  mannerisms  as  well  as  with  the 
habitual  turn  of  speech  in  Marston's  acknowl- 
edged comedies.  There  is  a  certain  incomposite 
and  indigestive  vigor  in  the  language  of  this  play 
which  makes  the  attribution  of  a  principal  share 
in  its  authorship  neither  utterly  discreditable  to 
Marston  nor  absolutely  improbable  in  itself;  and 
the  satire  aimed  at  Ben  Jonson,  if  not  especially 
relevant  to  the  main  action,  is  at  all  events  less 
incongruous  and  preposterous  in  its  relation  to 
the  rest  of  the  work  than  the  satirical  or  con- 
troversial part  of  Dekker's  "Satiromastix."  But 
on  the  whole,  if  this  play  be  Marston's,  it  seems 
to  me  the  rudest  and  the  poorest  he  has  left  us, 
except  perhaps  the  comedy  of  "What  you  Will," 
in  which  several  excellent  and  suggestive  situa- 
tions are  made  less  of  than  they  should  have  been, 
and  a  good  deal  of  promising  comic  invention  is 
wasted  for  want  of  a  little  more  care  and  a  little 
more  conscience  in  cultivation  of  material  and 
composition  of  parts.  The  satirical  references  to 
Jonson  are  more  pointed  and  effective  in  this 
comedy  than  in  either  of  the  two  plays  last  men- 
tioned ;  but  its  best  claim  to  remembrance  is  to  be 
sought  in  the  admirable  soliloquy  which  relates 
the  seven  years'  experience  of  the  student  and  his 
spaniel.     Marston  is  too  often  heaviest  when  he 


128        THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

would  and  should  be  lightest — owing  apparently 
to  a  certain  infusion  of  contempt  for  light  comedy 
as  something  rather  beileath  him,  not  wholly  wor- 
thy of  his  austere  and  ambitious  capacity.  The 
parliament  of  pages  in  this  play  is  a  diverting 
interlude  of  farce,  though  a  mere  irrelevance  and 
impediment  to  the  action ;  but  the  boys  are  less 
amusing  than  their  compeers  in  the  anonymous 
comedy  of  "Sir  Giles  Goosecap,"  first  published 
in  the  year  preceding :  a  work  of  genuine  humor 
and  invention,  excellent  in  style  if  somewhat  in- 
firm in  construction,  for  a  reprint  of  which  we 
are  indebted  to  the  previous  care  of  Marston's 
present  editor.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  intrude  on 
the  barren  and  boggy  province  of  hypothetical 
interpretation  and  controversial  commentary; 
but  I  may  observe  in  passing  that  the  original  of 
Simplicius  Faber  in  ' '  What  you  Will "  must  surely 
have  been  the  same  hanger-on  or  sycophant  of 
Ben  Jonson's  who  was  caricatured  by  Dekker  in 
his  "  Satiromastix "  under  the  name  of  Asinius 
Bubo.  The  gross  assurance  of  self-complacent 
duncery,  the  apish  arrogance  and  imitative  dog- 
matism of  reflected  self-importance  and  authority 
at  second  hand,  are  presented  in  either  case 
with  such  identity  of  tone  and  coloring  that 
we  can  hardly  imagine  the  satire  to  have  been 
equally   applicable   to   two    contemporary   sat- 


JOHN   MARSTON  129 

ellites    of    the   same   imperious   and   masterful 
egoist. 

That  the  same  noble  poet  and  high-souled 
humorist  was  not  responsible  for  the  offence 
given  to  Caledonian  majesty  in  the  comedy  of 
"Eastward  Ho!"  the  authentic  word  of  Jonson 
would  be  sufficient  evidence ;  but  I  am  inclined  to 
think  it  a  matter  of  almost  certain  likelihood — if 
not  of  almost  absolute  proof — that  Chapman  was 
as  innocent  as  Jonson  of  a  jest  for  which  Marston 
must  be  held  responsible  —  though  scarcely,  I 
should  imagine,  blamable  at  the  present  day  by 
the  most  rabid  of  Scottish  provincialists.  In  the 
last  scene  of  "The  Malcontent"  a  court  lady  says 
to  an  infamous  old  hanger-on  of  the  court:  "And 
is  not  Signor  St.  Andrew  a  gallant  fellow  now?" 
to  which  the  old  hag  replies:  "Honor  and  he 
agree  as  well  together  as  a  satin  suit  and  woollen 
stockings."  The  famous  passage  in  the  comedy 
which  appeared  a  year  later  must  have  been  far 
less  offensive  to  the  most  nervous  patriotism  than 
this;  and  the  impunity  of  so  gross  an  insult,  so 
obviously  and  obtrusively  offered,  to  the  new 
knightships  and  lordships  of  King  James's  venal 
chivalry  and  parasitic  nobility,  may  naturally 
have  encouraged  the  satirist  to  repeat  his  stroke 
next  year — and  must  have  astounded  his  retro- 
spection, when  he  found  himself  in  prison,  and 


I30         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

under  threat  of  worse  than  imprisonment,  to- 
gether with  his  unoffending  associates  in  an  ad- 
mirable and  inoffensive  comedy.  It  is  impossible 
to  suppose  that  he  would  not  have  come  forward 
to  assume  the  responsibility  of  his  own  words — 
as  it  is  impossible  to  imagine  that  Jonson  or 
Chapman  would  have  given  up  his  accomplice  to 
save  himself.  But  the  law  of  the  day  would 
probably  have  held  them  all  responsible  alike. 

In  the  same  year  as  "Eastward  Ho!"  appeared 
the  best  and  completest  piece  of  work  which  we 
owe  to  the  single  hand  of  Marston.  A  more 
brilliant  and  amusing  play  than  "The  Dutch 
Courtesan,"  better  composed,  better  constructed, 
and  better  written,  it  would  be  difficult  to  dis- 
cover among  the  best  comic  and  romantic  works 
of  its  incomparable  period.  The  slippery  and  san- 
guinary strumpet  who  gives  its  name  to  the  play 
is  sketched  with  such  admirable  force  and  free- 
dom of  hand  as  to  suggest  the  existence  of  an 
actual  model  who  may  unconsciously  have  sat 
for  the  part  under  the  scrutiny  of  eyes  as  keen 
and  merciless  as  ever  took  notes  for  a  savagely 
veracious  caricature — or  for  an  unscrupulously 
moral  exposure.  The  jargon  in  which  her  emo- 
tions are  expressed  is  as  Shakespearean  in  its 
breadth  and  persistency  as  that  of  Dr.  Caius  or 
Captain  Fluellen;  but  the  reality  of  those  emo- 


JOHN    MARSTON  131 

tions  is  worthy  of  a  less  farcical  vehicle  for  the 
expression  of  such  natural  craft  and  passion.  The 
sisters,  Beatrice  and  Crispinella,  seem  at  first  too 
evidently  imitated  from  the  characters  of  Aurelia 
and  Phoenixella  in  the  earliest  surviving  comedy 
of  Ben  Jonson;  but  the  "comedy  daughter,"  as 
Dickens  (or  Skimpole)  would  have  expressed  it, 
is  even  more  coarsely  and  roughly  drawn  than  in 
the  early  sketch  of  the  more  famous  dramatist. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  allowed — though  it 
may  not  be  recognized  without  a  certain  sense 
of  surprise — that  the  nobler  and  purer  type  of 
womanhood  or  girlhood  which  we  owe  to  the 
hand  of  Marston  is  far  above  comparison  with  any 
which  has  been  accomplished  or  achieved  by  the 
studious  and  vehement  elaboration  of  Ben  Jon- 
son's.  The  servility  of  subservience  which  that 
great  dramatist  exacts  from  his  typically  vir- 
tuous women — from  the  abject  and  anaemic  wife 
of  a  Corvino  or  a  Fitzdottrel — is  a  quality  which 
could  not  coexist  with  the  noble  and  loving 
humility  of  Marston's  Beatrice.  The  admirable 
scene  in  which  she  is  brought  face  to  face  with 
the  impudent  pretentions  of  the  woman  who 
asserts  herself  to  have  been  preferred  by  the 
betrothed  lover  of  the  expectant  bride  is  as 
pathetic  and  impressive  as  it  is  lifelike  and  orig- 
inal; and  even  in  the  excess  of  gentleness  and 


132         THE   AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

modesty  which  prompts  the  words,  "I  will  love 
you  the  better;  I  cannot  hate  what  he  affected," 
there  is  nothing  less  noble  or  less  womanly  than 
in  the  subsequent  reply  to  the  harlot's  repeated 
taunts  and  inventions  of  insult :  ' '  He  did  not  ill 
not  to  love  me,  but  sure  he  did  not  well  to  mock 
me:  gentle  minds  will  pity,  though  they  cannot 
love;  yet  peace  and  my  love  sleep  with  him." 
The  powerful  soliloquy  which  closes  the  scene  ex- 
presses no  more  than  the  natural  emotion  of  the 
man  who  has  received  so  lovely  a  revelation  of 
his  future  bride's  invincible  and  single-hearted 
love: 

Cannot  that  woman's  evil,  jealousy, 

Despite  disgrace,  nay,  which  is  worse,  contempt. 

Once  stir  thy  faith? 

Coarse  as  is  often  the  language  of  Marston's  plays 
and  satires,  the  man  was  not  coarse-minded — ^not 
gross  of  spirit  nor  base  of  nature — who  could 
paint  so  delicately  and  simply  a  figure  so  beau- 
tiful in  the  tenderness  of  its  purity. 

The  farcical  underplot  of  this  play  is  worthy 
of  Moliere  in  his  broader  mood  of  farce.  Hardly 
any  Jourdain  or  Pourceaugnac,  any  George  Dan- 
din  or  Comtesse  d'Escarbagnas  of  them  all,  under- 
goes a  more  grotesque  experience  or  plays  a  more 
ludicrous  part  than  is  devised  for  Mr.  and  Mrs. 


JOHN   MARSTON  133 

Mulligriib  by  the  ingenuity  of  the  indefatigable 
Cocledemoy — a  figure  worthy  to  stand  beside  any 
of  the  tribe  of  Mascarille  as  fourbum  imperator. 
The  animation  and  variety  of  inventive  humor 
which  keep  the  reader's  laughing  attention  awake 
and  amused  throughout  these  adventurous  scenes 
of  incident  and  intrigue  are  not  more  admirable 
than  the  simplicity  and  clearness  of  evolution  or 
composition  which  recall  and  rival  the  classic 
masterpieces  of  Latin  and  French  comedy.  There 
is  perhaps  equal  fertility  of  humor,  but  there 
certainly  is  not  equal  harmony  of  structure  in  the 
play  which  Alarston  published  next  year — ' '  Para- 
sitaster ;  or,  the  Fawn " ;  a  name  probably  sug- 
gested by  that  of  Ben  Jonson's  "Poetaster,"  in 
which  the  author  had  himself  been  the  subject  of 
a  greater  man's  rage  and  ridicule.  The  wealth  and 
the  waste  of  power  displayed  and  paraded  in  this 
comedy  are  equally  admirable  and  lamentable; 
for  the  brilliant  effect  of  its  various  episodes  and 
interludes  is  not  more  obvious  than  the  eclipse  of 
the  central  interest,  the  collapse  of  the  serious 
design,  which  results  from  the  agglomeration  of 
secondary  figures  and  the  alternations  of  per- 
petual by-play.  Three  or  four  better  plays  might 
have  been  made  out  of  the  materials  here  hurled 
and  huddled  together  into  one.  The  Isabelle  of 
Moliere  is  not  more  amusing  or  more  delightful  in 


134         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

her  audacity  of  resource,  in  her  combination  of 
loyalty  with  duplicity,  innocence  with  intrigue, 
than  the  daring  and  vsingle-hearted  young  heroine 
of  this  play;  but  the  "Ecole  des  Maris"  is  not 
encumbered  with  such  a  crowd  of  minor  interests 
and  characters,  of  subordinate  humors  and  com- 
plications, as  the  reader  of  Marston's  comedy 
finds  interposed  and  intruded  between  his  atten- 
tion and  the  main  point  of  interest.  He  would 
fain  see  more  of  Dulcimel  and  Tiberio,  the  in- 
genious and  enterprising  princess,  the  ingenuous 
and  responsive  prince;  he  is  willing  to  see  as 
much  as  is  shown  him  of  their  fathers,  the  mas- 
querading philosopher  and  the  self-complacent 
dupe;  Granuffo,  the  patrician  prototype  of  Cap- 
tain John  Bunsby,  may  take  a  seat  in  the  cham- 
bers of  his  memory  beside  the  commander  of 
the- Cautious  Clara;  the  humors  of  a  jealous 
foul-minded  fool  and  a  somewhat  audaciously 
virtuous  wife  may  divert  him  by  the  inventive 
and  vigorous  exposure  of  their  various  revolu- 
tions and  results;  but  the  final  impression  is  one 
of  admiring  disappointment  and  possibly  un- 
grateful regret  that  so  much  energetic  satire  and 
so  much  valuable  time  should  have  been  spent 
on  the  somewhat  nauseous  follies  of  "sickly 
knights"  and  "vicious  braggarts"  that  the  really 
admirable  and  attractive  parts  of  the  design  are 


JOHN    MARSTON  135 

cramped  and  crowded  out  of  room  for  the  due 
development  of  their  just  and  requisite  propor- 
tions. 

A  more  eccentric,  uneven,  and  incomposite 
piece  of  work  than  "The  Insatiate  Countess"  it 
would  be  difficult  to  find  in  English  or  in  other 
literature.  The  opening  scene  is  picturesque  and 
impressive;  the  closing  scene  of  the  serious  part 
is  noble  and  pathetic ;  but  the  intervening  action 
is  of  a  kind  which  too  often  aims  at  the  tragic  and 
hits  the  burlesque.  The  incessant  inconstancy 
of  passion  which  hurries  the  fantastic  heroine 
through  such  a  miscellaneous  multitude  of  im- 
provised intrigues  is  rather  a  comic  than  a  tragic 
motive  for  the  conduct  of  a  play ;  and  the  farcical 
rapidity  with  which  the  puppets  revolve  makes  it 
impossible  for  the  most  susceptible  credulity  to 
take  any  real  interest  or  feel  any  real  belief  in  the 
perpetual  rotation  of  their  feverish  moods  and 
m.otives,  their  irrational  doings  and  sufferings. 
The  humor  of  the  underplot  constantly  verges  on 
horse-play,  and  is  certainly  neither  delicate  nor 
profound;  but  there  is  matter  enough  for  mirth 
in  it  to  make  the  reader  duly  grateful  for  the 
patient  care  and  admirable  insight  which  Mr. 
Bullen  has  brought  to  bear  upon  the  really  formi- 
dable if  apparently  trivial  task  of  reducing  the 
chaotic   corruption   and   confusion   of   the   text 


136         THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

to  reasonable  form  and  comprehensible  order, 
William  Barkstead,  a  narrative  poet  of  real  merit, 
and  an  early  minister  at  the  shrine  of  Shake- 
speare, has  been  credited  with  the  authorship 
of  this  play:  I  am  inclined  to  agree  with  the 
suggestion  of  its  latest  editor — its  first  editor 
in  any  serious  sense  of  the  word — that  both  he 
and  Marston  may  have  had  a  hand  in  it.  His 
"Myrrha"  belongs  to  the  same  rather  morbid 
class  of  poems  as  Shakespeare's  "Venus  and 
Adonis"  and  Marston's  "Pygmalion's  Image." 
Of  the  three  Shakespeare's  is  not  more  certainly 
the  finest  in  occasional  touches  of  picturesque 
poetry  than  it  is  incomparably  the  most  offensive 
to  good  taste  and  natural  instinct  on  the  score 
of  style  and  treatment.  Marlowe's  "Hero  and 
Leander ' '  can  only  be  classed  with  these  elaborate 
studies  of  sensual  aberration  or  excess  by  those 
"who  can  see  no  difference  between  Titian  and 
French  photographs."  (I  take  leave,  for  once  in 
a  way,  to  quote  from  a  private  letter — long  since 
addressed  to  the  present  commentator  by  the 
most  illustrious  of  writers  on  art.) 

There  are  some  pretty  verses  and  some  in- 
genious touches  in  Marston's  "Entertainment," 
offered  to  Lady  Derby  by  her  daughter  and  son- 
in-law;  but  the  Latinity  of  his  city  pageant  can 
scarcely  have  satisfied  the  pupil  of  Buchanan, 


JOHN   MARSTON  137 

unless  indeed  the  reputation  of  King  James's 
tutor  as  a  Latin  versifier  or  master  of  prosody  has 
been  scandalously  usurped  under  the  falsest  of 
pretences:  a  matter  on  which  I  am  content  to 
accept  the  verdict  of  Landor.  His  contribution 
to  Sir  Robert  Chester's  problematic  volume  may 
perhaps  claim  the  singular  distinction  of  being 
more  incomprehensible,  more  crabbed,  more  pre- 
posterous, and  more  inexplicable  than  any  other 
copy  of  verses  among  the  "divers  poetical  essays 
— done  by  the  best  and  chiefest  of  our  modem 
writers,  with  their  names  subscribed  to  their 
particular  works,"  in  which  Marston  has  the 
honor  to  stand  next  to  Shakespeare;  and  how- 
ever far  he  may  be  from  any  pretention  to  rival 
the  incomparable  charm  of  Shakespeare's  open- 
ing quatrain — incomparable  in  its  peculiar  mel- 
ody and  mystery  except  with  other  lyrics  of 
Shakespeare's  or  of  Shelley's,  it  must,  I  think, 
be  admitted  that  an  impartial  student  of  both 
effusions  will  assign  to  Marston  rather  than  to 
Shakespeare  the  palm  of  distinction  on  the  score 
of  tortuous  obscurity  and  enigmatic  verbiage.  It 
may  be — as  it  seems  to  me — equally  dijfficult  to 
make  sense  of  the  greater  and  the  lesser  poet's 
riddles  and  rhapsodies ;  but  on  the  whole  I  cannot 
think  that  Shakespeare's  will  be  found  so  des- 
perately indigestible  by  the  ordinary  intelligence 


138         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

of  manhood  as  Marston's.  "The  turtles  fell  to 
work,  and  ate  each  other  up,"  in  a  far  more  com- 
prehensible and  reasonable  poem  of  Hood's;  and 
most  readers  of  Chester's  poem  and  the  verses 
appended  to  it  will  be  inclined  to  think  that  it 
might  have  been  as  well — except  for  a  few  lines  of 
Shakespeare's  and  of  Jonson's  which  we  could 
not  willingly  spare — if  the  Phoenix  and  Turtle 
had  set  them  the  example. 

If  the  apparently  apocryphal  Mountebank's 
Masque  be  really  the  work  of  Marston — and  it  is 
both  coarse  enough  and  clever  enough  to  deserve 
the  attribution  of  his  authorship — there  is  a  sin- 
gular echo  in  it  from  the  opening  of  Jonson's 
"Poetaster,"  the  furious  dramatic  satire  which 
blasted  for  upward  of  two  centuries  the  fame  or 
the  credit  of  the  poet  to  whose  hand  this  masque 
has  been  hitherto  assigned.  In  it,  after  a  full 
allowance  of  rough  and  ribald  jocosity,  the  pres- 
ence of  a  poet  becomes  manifest  with  the  en- 
trance of  an  allegoric  figure  whose  declamatory 
address  begins  with  these  words: 

Light,  I  salute  thee;  I,  Obscurity, 
The  son  of  Darkness  and  forgetful  Lethe; 
I,  that  envy  thy  brightness,  greet  thee  now, 
Enforced  by  Fate. 

Few  readers  of  these  lines  will  forget  the  verses 


JOHN    MARSTON  139 

with  which  Envy  plays  prologue  to  "Poetaster; 
or,  his  Arraignment"; 

Light,   I  salute  thee,  but  with  wounded  nerves, 
Wishing  thy  golden  splendor  pitchy  darkness. 

Whoever  may  be  the  author  of  this  masque,  there 
are  two  or  three  couplets  well  worth  remembrance 
in  one  of  the  two  versions  of  its  text: 

It  is  a  life  is  never  ill 

To  lie  and  sleep  in  roses  still. 

Who  would  not  hear  the  nightingale  still  sing, 
Or  who  grew  ever  weary  of  the  spring  ? 
The  day  must  have  her  night,  the  spring  her  fall. 
All  is  divided,  none  is  lord  of  all. 

These  verses  are  worthy  of  a  place  in  any  one  of 
Mr.  Bullen's  beautiful  and  delightful  volumes  of 
l^^rics  from  Elizabethan  song-books;  and  higher 
praise  than  this  no  lyrical  poet  could  reasonably 
desire. 

An  inoffensive  monomaniac,  who  thought  fit 
to  reprint  a  thing  in  dramatic  or  quasi-dramatic 
form  to  which  I  have  already  referred  in  pass- 
ing— "Histriomastix;  or,  the  Player  Whipt  " — 
thought  likewise  fit  to  attribute  to  John  Marston, 
of  all  men  on  earth,  a  share  in  the  concoction  of 
this  shapeless  and  unspeakable  piece  of  nonsense. 
The  fact  that  one  of  the  puppets  in  the  puppet- 


I40        THE   AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

show  is  supposed  to  represent  a  sullen  scholar, 
disappointed,  impoverished,  and  virulent,  would 
have  suggested  to  a  rational  reader  that  the 
scribbler  who  gave  vent  to  the  impotence  of  his 
rancor  in  this  hopeless  ebullition  of  envious  de- 
spair had  set  himself  to  ape  the  habitual  man- 
ner of  Jonson  and  the  occasional  manner  of 
Marston  with  about  as  much  success  as  might  be 
expected  from  a  malignant  monkey  when  at- 
tempting to  reproduce  in  his  grimaces  the  ex- 
pression of  human  indignation  and  contempt. 
But  to  students  of  natural  or  literary  history 
who  cannot  discern  the  human  from  the  simious 
element  it  suggests  that  the  man  thus  imitated 
must  needs  have  been  the  imitator  of  himself; 
and  the  fact  that  the  whole  attempt  at  satire  is 
directed  against  dramatic  poetry — that  all  the 
drivelling  venom  of  a  dunce's  denunciation,  all 
the  virulent  slaver  of  his  grovelling  insolence, 
is  aimed  at  the  stage  for  which  Marston  was  em- 
ployed in  writing — weighs  nothing  in  the  scales 
of  imbecility  against  the  consideration  that  Mar- 
ston's  or  Jonson's  manner  is  here  and  there  more 
or  less  closely  imitated;  that  we  catch  now  and 
then  some  such  echo  of  his  accent,  some  such 
savor  of  his  style,  as  may  be  discovered  or  im- 
agined in  the  very  few  scattered  lines  which 
show  any  glimmer  of  capacity  for  composition 


JOHN   MARSTON  141 

or  versification.  The  eternal  theme  of  envy,  in- 
vented by  Jonson  and  worked  to  death  by  its  in- 
ventor, was  taken  up  again  by  Marston  and  treat- 
ed with  a  vigorous  acerbity  not  always  unworthy 
of  comparison  with  Jonson's:  the  same  concep- 
tion inspired  with  something  of  eloquence  the 
malignant  idiocy  of  the  satirical  dunce  who  has 
left  us,  interred  and  embedded  in  a  mass  of  rub- 
bish, a  line  or  two  like  these  which  he  has  put 
into  the  mouth  of  his  patron  saint  or  guardian 
goddess,  the  incarnate  essence  of  Envy: 

Turn,  turn,  thou  lackey  to  the  winged  time! 
I  envy  thee  in  that  thou  art  so  slow, 
And  I  so  swift  to  mischief. 

But  the  entire  affair  is  obviously  an  effusion  and 
an  example  of  the  same  academic  sagacity  or 
lucidity  of  appreciation  which  found  utterance  in 
other  contemporary  protests  of  the  universities 
against  the  universe.  In  that  abyss  of  dulness 
"The  Return  from  Parnassus,"  a  reader  or  a 
diver  who  persists  in  his  thankless  toil  will  dis- 
cover this  pearl  of  a  fact  —  that  men  of  culture 
had  no  more  hesitation  in  preferring  Watson  to 
Shakespeare  than  they  have  in  preferring  Byron 
to  Shelley.  The  author  of  the  one  deserves  to 
have  been  the  author  of  the  other.  Nobody  can 
have  been  by  nature  such  a  fool   as  to  write 


142         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

either:  art,  education,  industry,  and  study  were 
needful  to  achieve  such  composite  perfection  of 
elaborate  and  consummate  idiocy. 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  bad  rubbish,  and  there 
is  some  really  brilliant  and  vigorous  writing,  in 
the  absurdly  named  and  absurdly  constructed 
comedy  of  "Jack  Drum's  Entertainment";  but 
in  all  other  points — in  plot,  incident,  and  pres- 
entation of  character — it  is  so  scandalously  be- 
neath contempt  that  I  am  sorry  to  recognize 
the  hand  of  Marston  in  a  play  which  introduces 
us  to  a  "noble  father,"  the  model  of  knightly 
manhood  and  refined  good  sense,  who  on  the 
news  of  a  beloved  daughter's  disappearance  in- 
stantly proposes  to  console  himself  with  a  heavy 
drinking-bout.  No  graver  censure  can  be  passed 
on  the  conduct  of  the  drama  than  the  admission 
that  this  monstrous  absurdity  is  not  out  of  keep- 
ing with  the  rest  of  it.  There  is  hardly  a  single 
character  in  all  its  rabble  rout  of  lunatics  who 
behaves  otherwise  than  would  beseem  a  pro- 
bationary candidate  for  Bedlam.  Yet  I  fear 
there  is  more  serious  evidence  of  a  circumstantial 
kind  in  favor  of  the  theory  which  would  saddle 
the  fame  of  Marston  with  the  charge  of  its  author- 
ship than  such  as  depends  on  peculiarities  of 
metre  and  eccentricities  of  phrase.  Some  other 
poet — though  I  know  of  none  such — may  have 


JOHN    MARSTON  143 

accepted  and  adopted  his  theory  that  "ven- 
geance" must  count  in  verse  as  a  word  of  three 
syllables:  I  can  hardly  believe  that  the  fancy 
would  sound  sweet  in  any  second  man's  ear:  but 
this  speciality  is  not  more  characteristic  than 
other  and  more  important  qualities  of  style — the 
peculiar  abruptness,  the  peculiar  inflation,  the 
peculiar  crudity — which  denote  this  comedy  as 
apparently  if  not  evidently  Marstonian.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  it  were  indeed  his,  it  is  impossible 
to  conjecture  why  his  name  should  have  been 
withheld  from  the  title-page ;  and  it  must  not  be 
forgotten  that  even  our  own  day  is  not  more 
fertile  than  was  Marston's  in  the  generation  of 
that  slavish  cattle  which  has  always  since  the 
age  of  Horace  fed  ravenously  and  thievishly  on 
the  pasture-land  of  every  poet  who  has  discovered 
or  reclaimed  a  field  or  a  province  of  his  own. 

But  our  estimate  of  John  Marston's  rank  or 
regiment  in  the  noble  army  of  contemporary 
poets  will  not  be  in  any  way  affected  by  accept- 
ance or  rejection  of  any  apocryphal  addition  to 
the  canon  of  his  writings.  For  better  and  for 
worse,  the  orthodox  and  undisputed  roll  of  them 
will  suffice  to  decide  that  question  beyond  all 
chance  of  intelligent  or  rational  dispute.  His 
rank  is  high  in  his  own  regiment ;  and  the  colonel 
of  that  regiment  is  Ben  Jonson.     At  first  sight 


144         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

he  may  seem  rather  to  belong  to  that  brighter  and 
more  famous  one  which  has  Webster  among  its 
captains,  Dekker  among  its  Heutenants,  Hey- 
wood  among  its  privates,  and  Shakespeare  at  its 
head.  Nor  did  he  by  any  means  follow  the 
banner  of  Jonson  w4th  such  automatic  fidelity  as 
that  imperious  martinet  of  genius  was  wont 
to  exact  from  those  who  came  to  be  "sealed  of 
the  tribe  of  Ben."  A  rigid  critic — a  critic  who 
should  push  rigidity  to  the  verge  of  injustice — 
might  say  that  he  was  one  of  those  recruits  in 
literature  whose  misfortune  it  is  to  fall  between 
two  stools — to  halt  between  two  courses.  It  is 
certain  that  he  never  thoroughly  mastered  either 
the  cavalry  drill  of  Shakespeare  or  the  infantry 
drill  of  Jonson.  But  it  is  no  less  certain  that  the 
few  finest  passages  which  attest  the  power  and  the 
purity  of  his  genius  as  a  poet  are  above  com- 
parison with  any  such  examples  of  tragic  poetry 
as  can  be  attributed  with  certainty  or  with  plau- 
sibility to  the  hand  which  has  left  us  no  ac- 
knowledged works  in  that  line  except  "Sejanus 
his  Fall"  and  "Catiline  his  Conspiracy."  It 
is  superfluous  to  add  that  "Volpone"  was  an 
achievement  only  less  far  out  of  his  reach  than 
' '  Hamlet. "  But  this  is  not  to  say  or  to  imply  that 
he  does  not  deserve  an  honorable  place  among 
English  poets.     His  savage  and  unblushing  vio- 


JOHN    MARSTON  145 

lence  or  vehemence  of  satire  has  no  taint  of  gloat- 
ing or  morbid  pniricnce  in  the  turbid  flow  of  its 
fitful  and  furious  rhetoric.  The  restless  rage  of 
his  invective  is  as  far  as  human  utterance  can 
find  itself  from  the  cynical  infidelity  of  an  lago. 
Of  him  we  may  say  with  more  rational  confidence 
what  was  said  of  that  more  potent  and  more 
truculent  satirist: 

An  honest  man  he  is,  and  hates  the  slime 
That  sticks  on  filthy  deeds. 

We  may  wish  that  he  had  not  been  so  much  given 
to  trampling  and  stamping  on  that  slime  as  to 
evoke  such  malodorous  exhalations  as  infect  the 
lower  and  shallower  reaches  of  the  river  down 
which  he  proceeds  to  steer  us  with  so  strenuous  a 
hand.  But  it  is  in  a  spirit  of  healthy  disgust,  not 
of  hankering  delight,  that  he  insists  on  calling  the 
indignant  attention  of  his  readers  to  the  baser 
and  fouler  elements  of  natural  or  social  man  as 
displayed  in  the  vicious  exuberance  or  eccentric- 
ity of  affectation  or  of  self-indulgence.  His  real 
interest  and  his  real  sympathies  are  reserved  for 
the  purer  and  nobler  types  of  womanhood  and 
manhood.  In  his  first  extant  tragedy,  crude  and 
fierce  and  coarse  and  awkward  as  is  the  general 
treatment  of  character  and  story,  the  sketch  of 
Mellida  is  genuinely  beautiful  in  its  pathetic  and 


146  THE  AGE  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

subdued  simplicity;  though  certainly  no  such 
tender  and  gentle  figure  was  ever  enchased  in  a 
stranger  or  less  attractive  setting.  There  is  an 
odd  mixture  of  care  and  carelessness  in  the  com- 
position of  his  plays  which  is  exemplified  by  the 
fact  that  another  personage  in  the  first  part  of 
the  same  dramatic  poem  was  announced  to  re- 
appear in  the  second  part  as  a  more  important 
and  elaborate  figure ;  but  this  second  part  opens 
with  the  appearance  of  his  assassin,  red-handed 
from  the  murder:  and  the  two  parts  were  pub- 
lished in  the  same  year.  And  indeed,  except 
in  "Parasitaster"  and  "The  Dutch  Courtesan," 
a  general  defect  in  his  unassisted  plays  is  the 
headlong  confusion  of  plot,  the  helter-skelter 
violence  of  incident,  which  would  hardly  have 
been  looked  for  in  the  work  of  a  professional  and 
practised  hand.  "What  you  Will"  is  modestly 
described  as  "a  slight-writ  play":  but  slight  and 
slovenly  are  not  the  same  thing ;  nor  is  simplicity 
the  equivalent  of  incoherence.  I  have  already 
observed  that  Marston  is  apt  to  be  heaviest  when 
he  aims  at  being  lightest;  not,  like  Ben  Jonson, 
through  a  laborious  and  punctilious  excess  of 
conscience  which  is  unwilling  to  let  slip  any 
chance  of  effect,  to  let  pass  any  detail  of  presen- 
tation; but  rather,  we  are  tempted  to  suspect, 
through  a  sardonic  sense  of  scorn  for  the  per- 


JOHN    MARSTON  147 

functory  task  on  which  his  ambitious  and  im- 
patient hand  is  for  the  time  employed.  Now 
and  then,  however — or  perhaps  it  would  be  more 
accurate  to  say  once  or  twice — a  gayer  note  is 
struck  with  a  lighter  touch  than  usual:  as,  for 
instance,  in  the  excellent  parody  of  Lyly  put  into 
the  mouth  of  an  idiot  in  the  first  scene  of  the 
fifth  act  of  the  first  part  of  "Antonio  and  Mel- 
lida."  "You  know,  the  stone  called  lapis,  the 
nearer  it  comes  to  the  fire,  the  hotter  it  is;  and 
the  bird  which  the  geometricians  call  avis,  the 
farther  it  is  from  the  earth,  the  nearer  it  is  to  the 
heaven ;  and  love,  the  nigher  it  is  to  the  flame,  the 
more  remote  (there's  a  word,  remote!) — the  more 
remote  it  is  from  the  frost."  Shakespeare  and 
Scott  have  condescended  to  caricature  the  style 
or  the  manner  of  the  inventor  of  euphuism :  I  can- 
not think  their  burlesque  of  his  elaborate  and 
sententious  triviality  so  happy,  so  humorous,  or 
so  exact  as  this.  But  it  is  not  on  his  capacity  as 
a  satirist  or  humorist,  it  is  on  his  occasionally 
triumphant  success  as  a  serious  or  tragic  poet, 
that  the  fame  of  Marston  rests  assuredly  es- 
tablished. His  intermittent  power  to  rid  himself 
for  a  while  of  his  besetting  faults,  and  to  acquire 
or  assume  for  a  moment  the  very  excellences 
most  incompatible  with  these,  is  as  extraordinary 
for  the  completeness  as  for  the  transience  of  its 


148         THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

successful  effects.  The  brief  fourth  act  of  "An- 
tonio and  Mellida"  is  the  most  astonishing  and 
bewildering  production  of  belated  human  genius 
that  ever  distracted  or  discomfited  a  student. 
Verses  more  delicately  beautiful  followed  by 
verses  more  simply  majestic  than  these  have 
rarely  if  ever  given  assurance  of  eternity  to  the 
fame  of  any  but  a  great  master  in  song : 

Conceit  you  me:  as  having  clasped  a  rose 

Within  my  palm,  the  rose  being  ta'en  away, 

My  hand  retains  a  little  breath  of  sweet, 

So  may  man's  trunk,  his  spirit  slipped  away, 

Hold  still  a  faint  perfume  of  his  sweet  guest. 

'Tis  so:  for  when  discursive  powers  fly  out, 

And  roam  in  progress  through  the  bounds  of  heaven, 

The  soul  itself  gallops  along  with  them 

As  chieftain  of  this  winged  troop  of  thought. 

Whilst  the  dull  lodge  of  spirit  standeth  waste 

Until  the  soul  return. 

Then  follows  a  passage  of  sheer  gibberish ;  then  a 
dialogue  of  the  noblest  and  most  dramatic  elo- 
quence; then  a  chaotic  alternation  of  sense  and 
nonsense,  bad  Italian  and  mixed  English,  abject 
farce  and  dignified  rhetoric,  spirited  simplicity 
and  bombastic  jargon.  It  would  be  more  and 
less  than  just  to  take  this  act  as  a  sample  or  a 
symbol  of  the  author's  usual  way  of  work ;  but  I 
cannot  imagine  that  a  parallel  to  it,  for  evil  and 
for  good,  could  be  found  in  the  works  of  any  other 
writer. 


JOHN   MARSTON  149 

The  Muse  of  this  poet  is  no  maiden  of  such 
pure  and  august  beauty  as  enthralls  us  with  ad- 
miration of  Webster's;  she  has  not  the  gypsy 
brightness  and  vagrant  charm  of  Dekker's,  her 
wild  soft  glances  and  flashing  smiles  and  fading 
traces  of  tears;  she  is  no  giddy  girl,  but  a  strong 
woman  with  fine  irregular  features,  large  and 
luminous  eyes,  broad  intelligent  forehead,  eye- 
brows so  thick  and  close  together  that  detraction 
might  call  her  beetle-browed,  powerful  mouth 
and  chin,  fine  contralto  voice  (with  an  occasional 
stammer),  expression  alternately  repellent  and 
attractive,  but  always  striking  and  sincere.  No 
one  has  ever  found  her  lovely ;  but  there  are  times 
when  she  has  a  fascination  of  her  own  which 
fairer  and  more  famous  singers  might  envy  her; 
and  the  friends  she  makes  are  as  sure  to  be  con- 
stant as  she,  for  all  her  occasional  roughness  and 
coarseness,  is  sure  to  be  loyal  in  the  main  to  the 
nobler  instincts  of  her  kind  and  the  loftier  tradi- 
tions of  her  sisterhood. 


THOMAS    MIDDLETON 

If  it  be  true,  as  we  are  told  on  high  authority, 
that  the  greatest  glory  of  England  is  her  litera- 
ture and  the  greatest  glory  of  English  literature 
is  its  poetry,  it  is  not  less  true  that  the  greatest 
glory  of  English  poetry  lies  rather  in  its  dramatic 
than  its  epic  or  its  lyric  triumphs.  The  name  of 
Shakespeare  is  above  the  names  even  of  Milton 
and  Coleridge  and  Shelley :  and  the  names  of  his 
comrades  in  art  and  their  immediate  successors 
are  above  all  but  the  highest  names  in  any  other 
province  of  our  song.  There  is  such  an  over- 
flowing life,  such  a  superb  exuberance  of  abound- 
ing and  exulting  strength,  in  the  dramatic  poetry 
of  the  half -century  extending  from  1590  to  1640, 
that  all  other  epochs  of  English  literature  seem 
as  it  were  but  half  awake  and  half  alive  by  com- 
parison with  this  generation  of  giants  and  of  gods. 
There  is  more  sap  in  this  than  in  any  other  branch 
of  the  national  bay-tree:  it  has  an  energy  in 
fertility  which  reminds  us  rather  of  the  forest 
than  the  garden  or  the  park.     It  is  true  that  the 


THOMAS   MIDDLETON  151 

weeds  and  briers  of  the  underwood  are  but  too 
likely  to  embarrass  and  offend  the  feet  of  the 
rangers  and  the  gardeners  who  trim  the  level 
fiower-plots  or  preserve  the  domestic  game  of 
enclosed  and  ordered  lowlands  in  the  tamer 
demesnes  of  literature.  The  sun  is  strong  and 
the  wind  sharp  in  the  climate  which  reared  the 
fellows  and  the  followers  of  Shakespeare.  The 
extreme  inequality  and  roughness  of  the  ground 
must  also  be  taken  into  account  when  we  are  dis- 
posed, as  I  for  one  have  often  been  disposed,  to 
wonder  beyond  measure  at  the  apathetic  igno- 
rance of  average  students  in  regard  of  the  abun- 
dant treasure  to  be  gathered  from  this  wildest 
and  most  fruitful  province  in  the  poetic  empire 
of  England.  And  yet,  since  Charles  Lamb  threw 
open  its  gates  to  all  comers  in  the  ninth  year 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  it  cannot  but  seem 
strange  that  comparatively  so  few  should  have 
availed  themselves  of  the  entry  to  so  rich  and 
royal  an  estate.  The  subsequent  labors  of  Mr. 
Dyce  made  the  rough  ways  plain  and  the  devious 
paths  straight  for  all  serious  and  worthy  students. 
And  now  again  Mr.  Bullen  has  taken  up  a  task 
than  which  none  more  arduous  and  important, 
none  worthier  of  thanks  and  praise,  can  be  un- 
dertaken by  an  English  scholar.  In  his  beautiful 
and  valuable  edition  of  Marlowe  there  are  but 


152         THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

two  points  to  which  exception  may  be  taken. 
It  was,  I  think,  a  fault  of  omission  to  exclude  the 
apocryphal  play  of  "Lust's  Dominion"  from  a 
place  in  the  appendix:  it  was,  I  am  certain,  a 
fault  of  commission  to  admit  instead  of  it  the 
much  bepuffed  and  very  puffy  rubbish  of  the  late 
Mr.  Home.  That  clever,  versatile,  and  energetic 
writer  nc'sr  went  so  far  out  of  his  depth  or 
floundered  so  pitifully  in  such  perilous  waters 
as  when  he  ventured  to  put  verses  of  his  own  into 
the  mouth  of  Christopher  Marlowe.  These  errors 
we  must  all  hope  to  see  rectified  in  a  second  issue 
of  the  text:  and  meantime  we  can  but  welcome 
with  all  possible  gratitude  and  applause  the  mag- 
nificent series  of  old  plays  by  unknown  writers 
which  we  owe  to  the  keen  research  and  the  fine 
appreciation  of  Marlowe's  latest  editor.  Of  these 
I  may  find  some  future  occasion  to  speak:  my 
present  business  is  with  the  admirable  poet  who 
has  been  promoted  to  the  second  place  in  Mr. 
Bullen's  collection  of  the  English  dramatists. 

The  selection  of  Middleton  for  so  distinguished 
a  place  of  honor  may  probably  not  approve  itself 
to  the  judgment  of  all  experts  in  dramatic  litera- 
ture. Charles  Lamb,  as  they  will  all  remember, 
would  have  advised  the  editor  * '  to  begin  with  the 
collected  plays  of  Heywood":  which  as  yet,  like 
the  plays  of  Dekker  and  of  Chapman,  remain  un- 


THOMAS   MIDDLETON  153 

edited  in  any  serious  or  scholarly  sense  of  the 
term.  The  existing  reprints  merely  reproduce, 
without  adequate  elucidation  or  correction,  the 
corrupt  and  chaotic  text  of  the  worst  early  edi- 
tions :  while  Middleton  has  for  upward  of  half  a 
century  enjoyed  the  privilege  denied  to  men  who 
are  usually  accounted  his  equals  if  not  his  supe- 
riors in  poetic  if  not  in  dramatic  genius.  Even 
for  an  editor  of  the  ripest  learning  and  the  highest 
ability  there  is  comparatively  little  to  do  where 
Mr.  Dyce  has  been  before  him  in  the  field.  How- 
ever, we  must  all  give  glad  and  grateful  welcome 
to  a  new  edition  of  a  noble  poet  who  has  never 
yet  received  his  full  meed  of  praise  and  justice: 
though  our  gratitude  and  our  gladness  may  be 
quickened  and  dilated  by  the  proverbial  sense 
of  further  favors  to  come. 

The  first  word  of  modem  tribute  to  the  tragic 
genius  of  Thomas  Middleton  was  not  spoken  by 
Charles  Lamb.  Four  years  before  the  appearance 
of  the  priceless  volume  which  established  his  fame 
forever  among  all  true  lovers  of  English  poetry 
by  copious  excerpts  from  five  of  his  most  charac- 
teristic works,  Walter  Scott,  in  a  note  on  the  fifty- 
sixth  stanza  of  the  second  fytte  of  the  metrical 
romance  of  "Sir  Tristrem,"  had  given  a  passing 
word  of  recognition  to  the  "horribly  striking" 
power  of  "some  passages"  in  Middleton's  master- 


154         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

piece :  which  was  first  reprinted  eleven  years  later, 
in  the  fourth  volume  of  Dilke's  Old  Plays.  Lamb, 
surprisingly  enough,  has  given  not  a  single  ex- 
tract from  that  noble  tragedy :  it  was  reserved  for 
Leigh  Hunt,  when  speaking  of  its  author,  to 
remark  that  "there  is  one  character  of  his  (De 
Flores  in  'The  Changeling')  which,  for  effect  at 
once  tragical,  probable,  and  poetical,  surpasses 
anything  I  know  of  in  the  drama  of  domestic  life." 
The  praise  is  not  a  whit  too  high ;  the  truth  could 
not  have  been  better  said. 

The  play  with  which  Mr.  Bullen,  altering  the 
arrangement  adopted  by  Mr.  Dyce,  opens  his 
edition  of  Middle  ton,  is  a  notable  example  of  the 
best  and  the  worst  qualities  which  distinguish  or 
disfigure  the  romantic  comedy  of  the  Shake- 
spearean age.  The  rude  and  reckless  composition, 
the  rough  intrusion  of  savorless  farce,  the  be- 
wildering combinations  of  incident  and  the  far 
more  bewildering  fluctuations  of  character — all 
the  inconsistencies,  incongruities,  incoherences  of 
the  piece  are  forgotten  when  the  reader  remem- 
bers and  reverts  to  the  passages  of  exquisite  and 
fascinating  beauty  which  relieve  and  redeem  the 
utmost  errors  of  negligence  and  haste.  To  find 
anything  more  delightful,  more  satisfying  in  its 
pure  and  simple  perfection  of  loveliness,  we  must 
turn  to  the  very  best  examples  of  Shakespeare's 


THOMAS   MIDDLETON  155 

youthful  work.  Nay,  it  must  be  allowed  that  in 
one  or  two  of  the  master's  earliest  plays — in  "Two 
Gentlemen  of  Verona,"  for  instance — we  shall  find 
nothing  comparable  for  charm  and  sincerity  of 
sweet  and  passionate  fancy  with  such  enchant- 
ing verses  as  these: 

O  happy  persecution,  I  embrace  thee 

With  an  unfettered  soul!     So  sweet  a  thing 

It  is  to  sigh  upon  the  rack  of  love, 

Where  each  calamity  is  groaning  witness 

Of  the  poor  martyr's  faith.     I  never  heard 

Of  any  true  aflfection,  but  'twas  nipt 

With  care,  that,  like  the  caterpillar,  eats 

The  leaves  ofif  the  spring's  sweetest  book,  the  rose. 

Love,  bred  on  earth,  is  often  nursed  in  hell : 

By  rote  it  reads  woe,  ere  it  learn  to  spell. 

Again:  the  "secure  tyrant,  but  unhappy  lover," 
w^hose  prisoner  and  rival  has  thus  expressed  his 
triumphant  resignation,  is  counselled  by  his 
friend  to  "go  laugh  and  lie  down,"  as  not  having 
slept  for  three  nights;  but  answers,  in  words 
even  more  delicious  than  his  supplanter's: 

Alas,  how  can  I  ?  he  that  truly  loves 

Btims  out  the  day  in  idle  fantasies; 

And  when  the  lamb  bleating  doth  bid  good-night 

Unto  the  closing  day,  then  tears  begin 

To  keep  quick  time  unto  the  owl,  whose  voice 

Shrieks  like  the  bellman  in  the  lover's  ears: 

Love's  eye  the  jewel  of  sleep,  O,  seldom  wears! 

The  early  lark  is  wakened  from  her  bed. 

Being  only  by  love's  plaints  disquieted; 


156         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

And,  singing  in  the  morning's  ear,  she  weeps, 
Being  deep  in  love,  at  lovers'  broken  sleeps: 
But  say  a  golden  slumber  chance  to  tie 
With  silken  strings  the  cover  of  love's  eye, 
Then  dreams,  magician-like,  mocking  present 
Pleasures,   whose  fading  leaves  more  discontent. 


Perfect  in  music,  faultless  in  feeling,  exquisite  in 
refined  simplicity  of  expression,  this  passage  is 
hardly  more  beautiful  and  noble  than  one  or  two 
in  the  play  which  follows.  "The  Phoenix"  is  a 
quaint  and  homely  compound  of  satirical  realism 
in  social  studies  with  Utopian  invention  in  the 
figure  of  an  ideal  prince,  himself  a  compound  of 
Harun-al-Rashid  and  "Albert  the  Good,"  who 
wanders  through  the  play  as  a  detective  in  dis- 
guise, and  appears  in  his  own  person  at  the  close 
to  discharge  in  full  the  general  and  particular 
claims  of  justice  and  philanthropy.  The  whole 
work  is  slight  and  sketchy,  primitive  if  not  puerile 
in  parts,  but  easy  and  amusing  to  read;  the  con- 
fidence reposed  by  the  worthy  monarch  in  noble- 
men of  such  unequivocal  nomenclature  as  Lord 
Proditor,  Lussurioso,  and  Infesto,  is  one  of  the 
signs  that  we  are  here  still  on  the  debatable 
borderland  between  the  old  Morality  and  the  new 
Comedy — a  province  where  incarnate  vices  and 
virtues  are  seen  figuring  and  posturing  in  what 
can  scarcely  be  called  masquerade.    But  the  two 


THOMAS   MIDDLETON  157 

fine  soliloquies  of  Phoenix  on  the  corruption  of  the 
purity  of  law  (act  i.  scene  iv.)  and  the  profana- 
tion of  the  sanctity  of  marriage  (act  ii.  scene  ii.) 
are  somewhat  riper  and  graver  in  style,  with  less 
admixture  of  rhyme  and  more  variety  of  cadence, 
than  the  lovely  verses  above  quoted.  Milton's 
obligation  to  the  latter  passage  is  less  direct  than 
his  earlier  obligation  to  a  later  play  of  Middleton's 
from  which  he  transferred  one  of  the  most  beau- 
tiful as  well  as  most  famous  images  in  ' '  Lycidas ' ' : 
but  his  early  and  intimate  acquaintance  with 
Middleton  had  apparently  (as  Mr.  Dyce  seems  to 
think^)  left  in  the  ear  of  the  blind  old  poet  a  more 
or  less  distinct  echo  from  the  noble  opening  verses 
of  the  dramatist's  address  to  "reverend  and 
honorable  matrimony." 

*  Mr.  Dyce  would  no  doubt  have  altered  his  opinion  had 
he  lived  to  see  the  evidence  adduced  by  the  Director  of  the 
New  Meltun  Society  that  the  real  author  of '  'A  Game  at  Chess' ' 
was  none  other  than  John  Milton  himself,  whose  earliest 
poems  had  appeared  the  year  before  the  publication  of  that 
anti-papal  satire.  This  discovery  is  only  less  curious  and 
precious  than  a  later  revelation  which  we  must  accept  on 
the  same  authority,  that  "  Comus  "  was  written  by  Sir  John 
Suckling,  "  Paradise  Regained "  by  Lord  Rochester,  and 
"  Samson  Agonistes  "  by  Elkanah  Settle:  while  on  the  other 
hand  it  may  be  affirmed  with  no  less  confidence  that  Milton 
— who  never  would  allow  his  name  to  be  spelled  right  on  the 
title-page  or  under  the  dedication  of  any  work  published 
by  him — owed  his  immunity  from  punishment  after  the 
Restoration  to  the  admitted  fact  that  he  was  the  real  author 
of  Dryden's  "Astrasa  Redux." 


iS8         THE   AGE   OF    SHAKESPEARE 

In  * '  Michaelmas  Term ' '  the  realism  of  Middle- 
ton's  comic  style  is  no  longer  alloyed  or  flavored 
with  poetry  or  fancy.  It  is  an  excellent  Ho- 
garthian  comedy,  full  of  rapid  and  vivid  incident, 
of  pleasant  or  indignant  humor.  Its  successor, 
"  A  Trick  to  Catch  the  Old  One , "  is  by  far  the  best 
play  Middleton  had  yet  written,  and  one  of  the 
best  he  ever  wrote.  The  merit  of  this  and  his 
other  good  comedies  does  not  indeed  consist  in 
any  new  or  subtle  study  of  character,  any  Shake- 
spearean creation  or  Jonsonian  invention  of  hu- 
mors or  of  men :  the  spendthrifts  and  the  misers, 
the  courtesans  and  the  dotards,  are  figures  bor- 
rowed from  the  common  stock  of  stage  tradition : 
it  is  the  vivid  variety  of  incident  and  intrigue, 
the  freshness  and  ease  and  vigor  of  the  style,  the 
clear  straightforward  energy  and  vivacity  of  the 
action,  that  the  reader  finds  most  praiseworthy 
in  the  best  comic  work  of  such  ready  writers  as 
Middleton  and  Dekker.  The  dialogue  has  some- 
times touches  of  real  humor  and  flashes  of 
genuine  wit:  but  its  readable  and  enjoyable 
quality  is  generally  independent  of  these.  Very 
witty  writing  may  be  very  dreary  reading,  for 
want  of  natural  animation  and  true  dramatic 
movement:  and  in  these  qualities  at  least  the 
rough-and-ready  work  of  our  old  dramatists  is 
seldom  if  ever  deficient. 


THOMAS    MIDDLETON  159 

It  is,  however,  but  too  probable  that  the 
reader's  enjoyment  may  be  crossed  with  a  dash  of 
exasperation  when  he  finds  a  writer  of  real  genius 
so  reckless  of  fame  and  self-respect  as  the  pressure 
of  want  or  the  weariness  of  overwork  seems  but 
too  often  and  too  naturally  to  have  made  too 
many  of  the  great  dramatic  journeymen  whose 
powers  were  half  wasted  or  half  worn  out  in  the 
struggle  for  bare  bread.  No  other  excuse  than 
this  can  be  advanced  for  the  demerit  of  Middle- 
ton's  next  comedy.  Had  the  author  wished  to 
show  how  w^ell  and  how  ill  he  could  write  at  his 
worst  and  at  his  best,  he  could  have  given  no 
fairer  proof  than  by  the  publication  of  two  plays 
issued  under  his  name  in  the  same  year  1608. 
"The  Family  of  Love"  is,  in  my  judgment,  un- 
questionably and  incomparably  the  worst  of 
Middleton's  plays:  very  coarse,  very  dull,  alto- 
gether distasteful  and  ineffectual.  As  a  religious 
satire  it  is  so  utterly  pointless  as  to  leave  no 
impression  of  any  definite  folly  or  distinctive 
knavery  in  the  doctrine  or  the  practice  of  the 
particular  sect  held  up  by  name  to  ridicule:  an 
obscure  body  of  feather-headed  fanatics,  con- 
cerning whom  we  can  only  be  certain  that  they 
were  decent  and  inoft'ensive  in  comparison  with 
the  yelling  Yahoos  whom  the  scandalous  and 
senseless  license  of  our  own  day  allows  to  run 


i6o        THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

and  roar  about  the  country  unmuzzled  and  un- 
whipped. 

There  is  much  more  merit  in  the  broad  comedy 
of  "Your  Five  Gallants,"  a  curious  burlesque 
study  of  manners  and  morals  not  generally 
commendable  for  imitation.  The  ingenious  and 
humorous  invention  which  supplies  a  centre  for 
the  picture  and  a  pivot  for  the  action  is  most  sin- 
gularly identical  with  the  device  of  a  modem 
detective  as  recorded  by  the  greatest  English 
writer  of  his  day.  "The  Butcher's  Story,"  told 
to  Dickens  by  the  policeman  who  had  played  the 
part  of  the  innocent  young  butcher,  may  be 
profitably  compared  by  lovers  of  detective 
humor  with  the  story  of  Fitsgrave — a  "thrice 
worthy"  gentleman  who  under  the  disguise  of  a 
young  gull  fresh  from  college  succeeds  in  cir- 
cumventing and  unmasking  the  five  associated 
swindlers  of  variously  villanous  professions  by 
whom  a  fair  and  amiable  heiress  is  beleaguered 
and  befooled.  The  play  is  somewhat  crude  and 
hasty  in  construction,  but  full  of  life  and  fun  and 
grotesque  variety  of  humorous  event. 

The  first  of  Middleton's  plays  to  attract  notice 
from  students  of  a  later  generation,  "A  Mad 
World,  My  Masters,"  if  not  quite  so  thoroughly 
good  a  comedy  as  "A  Trick  to  Catch  the  Old 
One,"  must  be  allowed  to  contain  the  very  best 


THOMAS   MIDDLETOxM  i6i 

comic  character  ever  drawn  or  sketched  by  the 
fertile  and  flowinj^  pen  of  its  author.  The  prodigal 
grandfather,  Sir  Bounteous  Progress,  is  perhaps 
the  most  Hfe-hke  figure  of  a  good-humored  and 
liberal  old  libertine  that  ever  amused  or  scan- 
dalized a  tolerant  or  intolerant  reader.  The  chief 
incidents  of  the  action  are  admirably  humorous 
and  ingenious;  but  the  matrimonial  part  of  the 
catastrophe  is  something  more  than  repulsive,  and 
the  singular  intervention  of  a  real  live  succubus, 
less  terrible  in  her  seductions  than  her  sister  of 
the  "Contes  Drolatiques,"  can  hardly  seem  happy 
or  seasonable  to  a  generation  which  knows  not 
King  James  and  his  Demonology. 

Of  the  two  poets  occasionally  associated  with 
Middleton  in  the  composition  of  a  play,  Dekker 
seems  usually  to  have  taken  in  hand  the  greater 
part,  and  Rowley  the  lesser  part,  of  the  composite 
poem  engendered  by  their  joint  efforts.  The 
style  of  "The  Roaring  Girl"  is  full  of  Dekker's 
peculiar  mannerisms;  slipshod  and  straggling 
metre,  incongruous  touches  or  flashes  of  fanciful 
or  lyrical  expression,  reckless  and  awkward  in- 
versions, irrational  and  irrepressible  outbreaks 
of  irregular  and  fitful  rhyme.  And  with  all 
these  faults  it  is  more  unmistakably  the  style 
of  a  bom  poet  than  is  the  usual  style  of  Mid- 
dleton.    Dekker  would  have  taken  a  high  place 


i62         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

among  the  finest  if  not  among  the  greatest  of 
English  poets  if  he  had  but  had  the  sense  of 
form — the  instinct  of  composition.  Whether  it 
was  modesty,  indolence,  indifference,  or  incom- 
petence, some  drawback  or  shortcoming  there 
was  which  so  far  impaired  the  quality  of  his 
strong  and  delicate  genius  that  it  is  impossible 
for  his  most  ardent  and  cordial  admirer  to  say 
or  think  of  his  very  best  work  that  it  really  does 
him  justice — that  it  adequately  represents  the 
fulness  of  his  unquestionable  powers.  And  yet 
it  is  certain  that  Lamb  was  not  less  right  than 
usual  when  he  said  that  Dekker  "had  poetry 
enough  for  anything. ' '  But  he  had  not  construc- 
tive power  enough  for  the  trade  of  a  playwright — 
the  trade  in  which  he  spent  so  many  weary  years 
of  ill-requited  labor.  This  comedy  in  which  we 
first  find  him  associated  with  Middleton  is  well 
written  and  well  contrived,  and  fairly  diverting 
— especially  to  an  idle  or  an  uncritical  reader: 
though  even  such  an  one  may  suspect  that  the 
heroine  here  represented  as  a  virginal  virago  must 
have  been  in  fact  rather  like  Dr.  Johnson's  fair 
friend  Bet  Flint;  of  whom  the  Great  Lexicog- 
rapher "used  to  say  that  she  was  generally  slut 
and  drunkard;  occasionally  whore  and  thief" 
(Boswell,  May  8,  1781).  The  parallel  would 
have  been  more  nearly  complete  if  Moll  Cutpurse 


THOMAS   MIDDLETON  163 

"had  written  her  own  Life  in  verse,"  and  brought 
it  to  Selden  or  Bishop  Hah  with  a  request  that  he 
would  furnish  her  with  a  preface  to  it. 

The  plays  of  Middleton  are  not  so  properly 
divisible  into  tragic  and  comic  as  into  realistic 
and  romantic — into  plays  of  which  the  mainspring 
is  essentially  prosaic  or  photographic,  and  plays 
of  which  the  mainspring  is  principally  fanciful  or 
poetical.  Two  only  of  the  former  class  remain 
to  be  mentioned:  "Anything  for  a  Quiet  Life" 
and  "A  Chaste  Maid  in  Cheapside."  There  is 
very  good  stuff  in  the  plot  or  groundwork  of  the 
former,  but  the  w^orkmanship  is  hardly  worthy  of 
the  material.  Mr.  Bullen  ingeniously  and  plau- 
sibly suggests  the  partnership  of  Shirley  in  this 
play;  but  the  conception  of  the  character  in 
which  he  discerns  a  likeness  to  the  touch  of  the 
lesser  dramatist  is  happier  and  more  original  than 
such  a  comparison  would  indicate.  The  young 
stepmother  whose  affectation  of  selfish  levity  and 
grasping  craft  is  really  designed  to  cure  her  hus- 
band of  his  infatuation,  and  to  reconcile  him 
with  the  son  who  regards  her  as  his  worst  enemy, 
is  a  figure  equally  novel,  effective,  and  attractive. 
The  honest  shopkeeper  and  his  shrewish  wife  may 
remind  us  again  of  Dickens  by  their  points  of 
likeness  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Snagsby;  though  the 
reformation   of   the   mercer's   jealous   vixen    is 


1 64        THE    AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

brought  about  by  more  humorous  and  less  tragical 
means  than  the  repentance  of  the  law-stationer's 
* '  little  woman, ' '  George  the  apprentice,  through 
whose  wit  and  energy  this  happy  consummation 
becomes  possible,  is  a  very  original  and  amusing 
example  of  the  young  Londoner  of  the  period. 
But  there  is  more  humor,  though  very  little 
chastit}^  in  the  "Chaste  Maid";  a  play  of  quite 
exceptional  freedom  and  audacity,  and  certainly 
one  of  the  drollest  and  liveliest  that  ever  broke 
the  bounds  of  propriety  or  shook  the  sides  of 
merriment. 

The  opening  of  "More  Dissemblers  Besides 
Women"  is  as  full  at  once  of  comic  and  of  ro- 
mantic promise  as  the  upshot  of  the  whole  is 
unsatisfactory — a  most  lame  and  impotent  con- 
clusion. But  some  of  the  dialogue  is  exquisite; 
full  of  flowing  music  and  gentle  grace,  of  ease 
and  softness  and  fancy  and  spirit ;  and  the  part 
of  a  poetic  or  romantic  Joseph  Surface,  as  perfect 
in  the  praise  of  virtue  as  in  the  practice  of  vice,  is 
one  of  Middleton's  really  fine  and  happy  inven- 
tions. In  the  style  of  "The  Widow"  there  is  no 
less  fluency  and  facility:  it  is  throughout  iden- 
tical with  that  of  Middleton's  other  comedies  in 
metre ;  a  style  which  has  go  many  points  in  com- 
mon with  Fletcher's  as  to  make  the  apocryphal 
attribution  of  a  share  in  this  comedy  to  the  hand 


THOMAS   MIDDLETON  165 

of  the  greater  poet  more  plausible  than  many 
other  ascriptions  of  the  kind.  I  am  inclined 
nevertheless  to  agree  with  Mr.  Bullen's  apparent 
opinion  that  the  whole  credit  of  this  brilliant  play 
may  be  reasonably  assigned  to  Middleton;  and 
especially  with  his  remark  that  the  only  scene  in 
which  any  resemblance  to  the  manner  of  Ben 
Jonson  can  be  traced  by  the  most  determined 
ingenuity  of  critical  research  is  more  like  the 
work  of  a  pupil  than  like  a  hasty  sketch  of  the 
master's.  There  is  no  lack  of  energetic  invention 
and  beautiful  versification  in  another  comedy  of 
adventure  and  intrigue,  "No  Wit,  No  Help  Like  a 
Woman's":  the  unpleasant  or  extravagant  qual- 
ity of  certain  incidents  in  the  story  is  partially 
neutralized  or  modified  by  the  unfailing  charm 
of  a  style  worthy  of  Fletcher  himself  in  his  ripest 
and  sweetest  stage  of  poetic  comedy. 

But  high  above  all  the  works  yet  mentioned 
there  stands  and  will  stand  conspicuous  while 
noble  emotion  and  noble  verse  have  honor  among 
English  readers  the  pathetic  and  heroic  play  so 
memorably  appreciated  by  Charles  Lamb,  "A 
Fair  Quarrel."  It  would  be  the  vainest  and 
emptiest  impertinence  to  offer  a  word  in  echo  of 
his  priceless  and  imperishable  praise.  The  deli- 
cate nobility  of  the  central  conception  on  which 
the  hero's  character  depends  for  its  full  relief  and 


1 66         THE   AGE   OF    SHAKESPEARE 

development  should  be  enough  to  efface  all  re- 
membrance of  any  defect  or  default  in  moral 
taste,  any  shortcoming  on  the  aesthetic  side  of 
ethics,  which  may  be  detected  in  any  slighter  or 
hastier  example  of  the  poet's  invention.  A  man 
must  be  dull  and  slow  of  sympathies  indeed  who 
cannot  respond  in  spirit  to  that  bitter  cry  of 
chivalrous  and  manful  agony  at  sense  of  the 
shadow  of  a  mother's  shame: 

Quench,  my  spirit, 
And  out  with  honor's  flaming  Hghts  within  thee! 
Be  dark  and  dead  to  all  respects  of  manhood! 
I  never  shall  have  use  of  valor  more. 

Middleton  has  no  second  hero  like  Captain  Ager: 
but  where  is  there  another  so  thoroughly  noble 
and  lovable  among  all  the  characters  of  all  the 
dramatists  of  his  time  but  Shakespeare? 

The  part  taken  by  Rowley  in  this  play  is  easy 
for  any  tiro  in  criticism  to  verify.  The  rough  and 
crude  genius  of  that  perverse  and  powerful  writer 
is  not  seen  here  by  any  means  at  its  best.  I 
should  say  that  his  call  was  rather  toward  tragedy 
than  toward  comedy;  that  his  mastery  of  severe 
and  serious  emotion  was  more  genuine  and  more 
natural  than  his  command  of  satirical  or  gro- 
tesque realism.  The  tragedy  in  which  he  has 
grappled  with  the  subject  afterward  so  differ- 
ently handled  in  the  first  and  greatest  of  Lan- 


THOMAS   MIDDLETON  167 

dor's  tragedies  is  to  me  of  far  more  interest  and 
value  than  such  comedies  as  that  which  kin- 
dled the  enthusiasm  of  a  loyal  Londoner  in  the 
civic  sympathies  of  Lamb.  Disfigured  as  it  is 
toward  the  close  by  indulgence  in  mere  horror 
and  brutality  after  the  fashion  of  Andronicus  or 
Jeronimo,  it  has  more  beauty  and  power  and 
pathos  in  its  best  scenes  than  a  reader  of  his 
comedies  would  have  expected.  But  in  the 
underplot  of  "A  Fair  Quarrel"  Rowley's  beset- 
ting faults  of  coarseness  and  quaintness,  stiffness 
and  roughness,  are  so  flagrant  and  obtrusive  that 
w^e  cannot  avoid  a  feeling  of  regret  and  irritation 
at  such  untimely  and  inharmonious  evidence  of 
his  partnership  with  a  poet  of  finer  if  not  of 
sturdier  genius.  The  same  sense  of  discord  and 
inequality  will  be  aroused  on  comparison  of  the 
worse  with  the  better  parts  of  "The  Old  Law." 
The  clumsiness  and  dulness  of  the  farcical  inter- 
ludes can  hardly  be  paralleled  in  the  rudest  and 
hastiest  scenes  of  Middleton's  writing:  while  the 
sweet  and  noble  dignity  of  the  finer  passages  have 
the  stamp  of  his  ripest  and  tenderest  genius  on 
every  line  and  in  every  cadence.  But  for  sheer 
bewildering  incongruity  there  is  no  play  known 
to  me  which  can  be  compared  with  "The  Mayor 
of  Queenborough."  Here  again  w^e  find  a  note  so 
dissonant  and  discordant  in  the  lighter  parts  of 


i68         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

the  dramatic  concert  that  we  seem  at  once  to 
recognize  the  harsher  and  hoarser  instrument  of 
Rowley.  The  farce  is  even  more  extravagantly 
and  preposterously  mistimed  and  misplaced  than 
that  which  disfigures  the  play  just  mentioned: 
but  I  thoroughly  agree  with  Mr.  Bullen's  high 
estimate  of  the  power  displayed  and  maintained 
throughout  the  tragic  and  poetic  part  of  this 
drama;  to  which  no  previous  critic  has  ever 
vouchsafed  a  w^ord  of  due  acknowledgment.  The 
story  is  ugly  and  unnatural,  but  its  repulsive 
effect  is  transfigured  or  neutralized  by  the  charm 
of  tender  or  passionate  poetry;  and  it  must  be 
admitted  that  the  hideous  villany  of  Vortiger  and 
Horsus  affords  an  opening  for  subsequent  scenic 
effects  of  striking  and  genuine  tragical  interest. 
The  difference  between  the  genius  of  Middle- 
ton  and  the  genius  of  Dekker  could  not  be  better 
illustrated  than  by  comparison  of  their  attempts 
at  political  and  patriotic  allegory.  The  lazy, 
slovenly,  impatient  genius  of  Dekker  flashes  out 
by  fits  and  starts  on  the  reader  of  the  play  in 
which  he  has  expressed  his  English  hatred  of 
Spain  and  Popery,  his  English  pride  in  the  rout 
of  the  Armada,  and  his  English  gratitude  for  the 
part  played  by  Queen  Elizabeth  in  the  crowning 
struggle  of  the  time:  but  his  most  cordial  ad- 
mirer can  hardly  consider  "The  Whore  of  Baby- 


THOMAS   MIDDLETON  169 

Ion"  a  shining  or  satisfactory  example  of  dra- 
matic art.  The  play  which  brought  Middleton 
into  prison,  and  earned  for  the  actors  a  sum  so 
far  beyond  parallel  as  to  have  seemed  incredible 
till  the  fullest  evidence  was  procured,  is  one  of 
the  most  complete  and  exquisite  works  of  artis- 
tic ingenuity  and  dexterity  that  ever  excited  or 
offended,  enraptured  or  scandalized  an  audience 
of  friends  or  enemies:  the  only  work  of  English 
poetry  which  may  properly  be  called  Aristo- 
phanic.  It  has  the  same  depth  of  civic  serious- 
ness, the  same  earnest  ardor  and  devotion  to  the 
old  cause  of  the  old  country,  the  same  solid 
fervor  of  enthusiasm  and  indignation,  which 
animated  the  third  great  poet  of  Athens  against 
the  corruption  of  art  by  the  sophistry  of  Eu- 
ripides and  the  corruption  of  manhood  by  the 
sophistry  of  Socrates.  The  delicate  skill  of  the 
workmanship  can  only  be  appreciated  by  careful 
and  thorough  study;  but  that  the  infusion  of 
poetic  fancy  and  feeling  into  the  generally  comic 
and  satiric  style  is  hardly  unworthy  of  the  com- 
parison which  I  have  ventured  to  challenge,  I 
will  take  but  one  brief  extract  for  evidence : 

Upon  those  lips,  the  sweet  fresh  buds  of  youth, 
The  holy  dew  of  prayer  lies,  like  pearl 
Dropt  from  the  opening  eyelids  of  the  morn 
Upon  a  bashful  rose. 


I70         THE   AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

Here  for  once  even  "that  celestial  thief"  John 
Milton  has  impaired  rather  than  improved  the 
effect  of  the  beautiful  phrase  borrowed  from  an 
earlier  and  inferior  poet.  His  use  of  Middleton's 
exquisite  image  is  not  quite  so  apt — so  perfectly 
picturesque  and  harmonious — as  the  use  to  which 
it  was  put  by  the  inventor. 

Nothing  in  the  age  of  Shakespeare  is  so  diffi- 
cult for  an  Englishman  of  our  own  age  to  realize 
as  the  temper,  the  intelligence,  the  serious  and 
refined  elevation  of  an  audience  which  was  at  once 
capable  of  enjoying  and  applauding  the  roughest 
and  coarsest  kinds  of  pleasantry,  the  rudest  and 
crudest  scenes  of  violence,  and  competent  to 
appreciate  the  finest  and  the  highest  reaches  of 
poetry,  the  subtlest  and  the  most  sustained  allu- 
sions of  ethical  or  political  symbolism.  The 
large  and  long  popularity  of  an  exquisite  dramatic 
or  academic  allegory  such  as  "Lingua,"  which 
would  seem  to  appeal  only  to  readers  of  excep- 
tional education,  exceptional  delicacy  of  percep- 
tion, and  exceptional  quickness  of  wit,  is  hardly 
more  remarkable  than  the  popular  success  of  a 
play  requiring  such  keen  constancy  of  atten- 
tion, such  vivid  wakefulness  and  promptitude 
of  apprehension,  as  this  even  more  serious  than 
fantastic  work  of  Middleton's.  The  vulgarity 
and  puerility  of  all  modem  attempts  at  any 


THOMAS    MIDDLETON  171 

comparable  effect  need  not  be  cited  to  throw  into 
relief  the  essential  finish,  the  impassioned  in- 
telligence, the  high  spiritual  and  literary  level, 
of  these  crowded  and  brilliant  and  vehement 
five  acts.  Their  extreme  cleverness,  their  in- 
defatigable ingenuity,  would  in  any  case  have 
been  remarkable :  but  their  fulness  of  active  and 
poetic  life  gives  them  an  interest  far  deeper  and 
higher  and  more  permanent  than  the  mere  sense 
of  curiosity  and  wonder. 

But  if  "A  Game  at  Chess"  is  especially  distin- 
guished by  its  complete  and  thorough  harmony  of 
execution  and  design,  the  lack  of  any  such  artistic 
merit  in  another  famous  work  of  Middleton's  is 
such  as  once  more  to  excite  that  irritating  sense 
of  inequality,  irregularity,  inconstancy  of  genius 
and  inconsequence  of  aim,  which  too  often  besets 
and  bewilders  the  student  of  our  early  dramatists. 
There  is  poetry  enough  in  ' '  The  Witch ' '  to  furnish 
forth  a  whole  generation  of  poeticules:  but  the 
construction  or  composition  of  the  play,  the 
arrangement  and  evolution  of  event,  the  distinc- 
tion or  development  of  character,  would  do  less 
than  little  credit  to  a  boy  of  twelve ;  who  at  any 
rate  would  hardly  have  thought  of  patching  up 
so  ridiculous  a  reconciliation  between  intending 
murderers  and  intended  victims  as  here  exceeds  in 
absurdity  the  chaotic  combination  of  accident  and 


172         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

error  which  disposes  of  inconvenient  or  super- 
fluous underhngs.  But  though  neither  Mr.  Dyce 
nor  Mr.  Bullen  has  been  at  all  excessive  or  unjust 
in  his  animadversions  on  these  flagrant  faults  and 
follies,  neither  editor  has  given  his  author  due 
credit  for  the  excellence  of  style,  of  language  and 
versification,  which  makes  this  play  readable 
throughout  with  pleasure,  if  not  always  without 
impatience.  Fletcher  himself,  the  acknowledged 
master  of  the  style  here  adopted  by  Middleton, 
has  left  no  finer  example  of  metrical  fluency  and 
melodious  ease.  The  fashion  of  dialogue  and 
composition  is  no  doubt  rather  feminine  than 
masculine:  Marlowe  and  Jonson,  Webster  and 
Beaumont,  Toumeur  and  Ford — to  cite  none  but 
the  greatest  of  authorities  in  this  kind — wrote  a 
firmer  if  not  a  freer  hand,  struck  a  graver  if  not 
a  sweeter  note  of  verse:  this  rapid  efliuence  of 
easy  expression  is  liable  to  lapse  into  conventional 
efflux  of  facile  improvisation :  but  such  command 
of  it  as  Middleton's  is  impossible  to  any  but  a 
genuine  and  a  memorable  poet. 

As  for  the  supposed  obligations  of  Shakespeare 
to  Middleton  or  Middleton  to  Shakespeare,  the 
imaginary  relations  of  "The  Witch"  to  "Mac- 
beth" or  "Macbeth"  to  "The  Witch,"  I  can  only 
say  that  the  investigation  of  this  subject  seems  to 
me  as  profitable  as  a  research  into  the  natural 


THOMAS   MIDDLETON  173 

history  of  snakes  in  Iceland.  That  the  editors 
to  whom  we  owe  the  miserably  defaced  and 
villanously  garbled  text  which  is  all  that  has 
reached  us  of  "Macbeth,"  not  content  with  the 
mutilation  of  the  greater  poet,  had  recourse  to 
the  interpolation  of  a  few  superfluous  and  in- 
congruous lines  or  fragments  from  the  lyric  por- 
tions of  the  lesser  poet's  work — that  the  players 
who  mangled  Shakespeare  were  the  pilferers  who 
plundered  Middleton — must  be  obvious  to  all 
but  those  (if  any  such  yet  exist  anywhere)  who 
are  capable  of  believing  the  unspeakably  im- 
pudent assertion  of  those  mendacious  male- 
factors that  they  have  left  us  a  pure  and  perfect 
edition  of  Shakespeare.  These  passages  are  all 
thoroughly  in  keeping  with  the  general  tone  of 
the  lesser  work:  it  would  be  tautology  to  add 
that  they  are  no  less  utterly  out  of  keeping  with 
the  general  tone  of  the  other.  But  in  their  own 
way  nothing  can  be  finer:  they  have  a  tragic 
liveliness  in  ghastliness,  a  grotesque  animation  of 
horror,  which  no  other  poet  has  ever  conceived  or 
conveyed  to  us.  The  difference  between  Michael 
Angelo  and  Goya,  Tintoretto  and  Gustave  Dore, 
does  not  quite  efface  the  right  of  the  minor  artists 
to  existence  and  remembrance. 

The   strange   and   strangely   beautiful    tragic 
poem,  which  could  not  have  come  down  to  us 


174         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

under  a  stupider  or  a  less  appropriate  name  than 
that  apparently  conferred  on  it  by  the  licenser  of 
"The  Second  Maiden's  Tragedy,"  must  by  all 
evidence  of  internal  and  external  probability  be 
almost  unquestionably  assigned  to  the  hand  of 
Middleton,  The  masterly  daring  of  the  stage 
effect,  which  cannot  or  should  not  be  mistaken  for 
the  merely  theatrical  audacity  of  a  headlong  im- 
pressionist at  any  price,  is  not  more  characteristic 
of  the  author  than  the  tender  and  passionate 
fluency  of  the  flawless  verse.  The  rather  eccen- 
tric intermittency  of  the  supernatural  action  is  a 
no  less  obviously  plausible  reason  for  assigning  it 
to  the  creator  of  so  realistic  a  witch  and  so  sin- 
gular a  succubus.  But  such  a  dramatic  poem  as 
this  would  be  a  conspicuous  jewel  in  the  crown  of 
any  but  a  supremely  great  dramatist  and  poet. 
And  the  musical  or  metrical  harmony  of  the  verse, 
imperceptible  as  it  may  be  or  rather  must  always 
be  to  the  long-eared  dunces  who  can  only  think 
to  hear  through  their  clumsy  fingers,  is  so  like 
Fletcher's  as  to  suggest  that  if  any  part  of  Shake- 
speare's "  King  Henry  VIII."  is  attributable  to  a 
lesser  hand  than  his  it  may  far  more  plausibly  be 
assigned  to  Middleton's  than  to  Fletcher's.  Had 
it  or  could  it  have  been  the  work  of  Fletcher,  the 
clamorous  and  multitudinous  satellites  who  pre- 
ferred him  with  such  furious  fatuity  of  acclama- 


THOMAS   MIDDLETON  175 

tion  to  so  inconsiderable  a  rival  as  Shakespeare 
would  hardly  have  abstained  from  reclaiming  it 
on  behalf  of  the  great  poet  whom  it  pleased  their 
imbecility  to  set  So  far  above  one  so  immeasura- 
bly and  so  unutterably  greater. 

The  tragedy  of  "Women  Beware  Women," 
whether  or  not  it  be  accepted  as  the  masterpiece 
of  Middleton,  is  at  least  an  excellent  example  of 
the  facility  and  fluency  and  equable  promptitude 
of  style  which  all  students  will  duly  appreciate 
and  applaud  in  the  riper  and  completer  work  of 
this  admirable  poet.  It  is  full  to  overflowing  of 
noble  eloquence,  of  inventive  resource  and  sug- 
gestive effect,  of  rhetorical  affluence  and  theatrical 
ability.  The  opening  or  exposition  of  the  play  is 
quite  masterly:  and  the  scene  in  which  the  for- 
saken husband  is  seduced  into  consolation  by  the 
temptress  of  his  wife  is  worthy  of  all  praise  for 
the  straightforward  ingenuity  and  the  serious 
delicacy  by  which  the  action  is  rendered  credible 
and  the  situation  endurable.  But  I  fear  that  few 
or  none  will  be  found  to  disagree  with  my  opinion 
that  no  such  approbation  or  tolerance  can  be 
reasonably  extended  so  as  to  cover  or  condone 
the  offences  of  either  the  underplot  or  the  upshot 
of  the  play.  The  one  is  repulsive  beyond  redemp- 
tion by  elegance  of  style,  the  other  is  preposter- 
ous beyond  extenuation  on  the  score  of  logical  or 


176         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

poetical  justice.  Those  who  object  on  principle 
to  solution  by  massacre  must  object  in  consist- 
ency to  the  conclusions  of  "Hamlet"  and  "King 
Lear";  nor  are  the  results  of  Webster's  tragic 
invention  more  questionable  or  less  inevitable 
than  the  results  of  Shakespeare's:  but  the  drag- 
net of  murder  which  gathers  in  the  characters  at 
the  close  of  this  play  is  as  promiscuous  in  its 
sweep  as  that  cast  by  Cyril  Toumeur  over  the 
internecine  shoal  of  sharks  who  are  hauled  in 
and  ripped  open  at  the  close  of  "The  Revenger's 
Tragedy."  Had  Middleton  been  content  with 
the  admirable  subject  of  his  main  action,  he 
might  have  given  us  a  simple  and  unimpeachable 
masterpiece:  and  even  as  it  is  he  has  left  us  a 
noble  and  memorable  work.  It  is  true  that  the 
irredeemable  infamy  of  the  leading  characters 
degrades  and  deforms  the  nature  of  the  interest 
excited:  the  good  and  gentle  old  mother  whose 
affectionate  simplicity  is  so  gracefully  and  at- 
tractively painted  passes  out  of  the  story  and 
drops  out  of  the  list  of  actors  just  when  some 
redeeming  figure  is  most  needed  to  assuage  the 
dreariness  of  disgust  with  which  we  follow  the 
fortunes  of  so  meanly  criminal  a  crew:  and  the 
splendid  eloquence  of  the  only  other  respectable 
person  in  the  play  is  not  of  itself  sufficient  to 
make  a  living  figure,  rather  than  the  mere  mouth- 


THOMAS   MIDDLETON  177 

piece  for  indignant  emotion,  of  so  subordinate 
and  inactive  a  character  as  the  Cardinal.  The 
lower  comedy  of  the  play  is  identical  in  motive 
with  that  which  defaces  the  master- work  of  Ford : 
more  stupid  and  offensive  it  hardly  could  be. 
But  the  high  comedy  of  the  scene  between  Livia 
and  the  Widow  is  as  fine  as  the  best  work  in  that 
kind  left  us  by  the  best  poets  and  humorists  of 
the  Shakespearean  age ;  it  is  not  indeed  unworthy 
of  the  comparison  with  Chaucer's  which  it  sug- 
gested to  the  all  but  impeccable  judgment  of 
Charles  Lamb. 

The  lack  of  moral  interest  and  sympathetic 
attraction  in  the  characters  and  the  story,  which 
has  been  noted  as  the  principal  defect  in  the 
otherwise  effective  composition  of  "Women  Be- 
ware Women,"  is  an  objection  which  cannot  be 
brought  against  the  graceful  tragicomedy  of 
"The  Spanish  Gipsy."  Whatever  is  best  in  the 
tragic  or  in  the  romantic  part  of  this  play  bears 
the  stamp  of  Middleton's  genius  alike  in  the 
sentiment  and  the  style.  "The  code  of  modem 
morals,"  to  borrow  a  convenient  phrase  from 
Shelley,  may  hardly  incline  us  to  accept  as 
plausible  or  as  possible  the  repentance  and  the 
redemption  of  so  brutal  a  rufifian  as  Roderigo: 
but  the  vivid  beauty  of  the  dialogue  is  equal  to 
the  vivid  interest  of  the  situation  which  makes 


178         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

the  first  act  one  of  the  most  striking  in  any  play 
of  the  time.  The  double  action  has  some  lead- 
ing points  in  common  with  two  of  Fletcher's, 
which  have  nothing  in  common  with  each  other: 
Merione  in  "The  Queen  of  Corinth"  is  less  in- 
teresting than  Clara,  but  the  vagabonds  of 
"Beggars'  Bush"  are  more  amusing  than  Row- 
ley's or  Middleton's.  The  play  is  somewhat  de- 
ficient in  firmness  or  solidity  of  construction:  it  is, 
if  such  a  phrase  be  permissible,  one  of  those  half- 
baked  or  underdone  dishes  of  various  and  con- 
fused ingredients,  in  which  the  cook's  or  the 
baker's  hurry  has  impaired  the  excellent  mate- 
rials of  wholesome  bread  and  savory  meat.  The 
splendid  slovens  who  served  their  audience  with 
spiritual  work  in  which  the  gods  had  mixed  "so 
much  of  earth,  so  much  of  heaven,  and  such 
impetuous  blood" — the  generous  and  headlong 
purveyors  who  lavished  on  their  daily  provision 
of  dramatic  fare  such  wealth  of  fine  material  and 
such  prodigality  of  superfluous  grace— the  fore- 
most followers  of  Marlowe  and  of  Shakespeare 
were  too  prone  to  follow  the  impetuous  example 
of  the  first  rather  than  the  severe  example  of  the 
second.  There  is  perhaps  not  one  of  them — and 
Middleton  assuredly  is  not  one — whom  we  can 
reasonably  imagine  capable  of  the  patience  and 
self-respect  which  induced  Shakespeare  to  re- 


THOMAS   MIDDLETON  179 

write  the  triumphantly  popular  parts  of  Romeo, 
of  Falstaff ,  and  of  Hamlet  with  an  eye  to  the  lit- 
erary perfection  and  permanence  of  work  which 
in  its  first  light  outline  had  won  the  crowning 
suffrage  of  immediate  or  spectacular  applause. 

The  rough-and-ready  hand  of  Rowley  may  be 
traced,  not  indeed  in  the  more  high-toned  pas- 
sages, but  in  many  of  the  most  animated  scenes  of 
"The  Spanish  Gipsy. ' '  In  the  most  remarkable  of 
the  ten  masks  or  interludes  which  appear  among 
the  collected  works  of  Middleton  the  two  names 
are  again  associated.  To  the  freshness,  liveliness, 
and  spirited  ingenuity  of  this  little  allegorical 
comedy  Mr.  Bullen  has  done  ample  justice  in 
his  excellent  critical  introduction.  "The  Inner- 
Temple  Masque,"  less  elaborate  than  "The  World 
Tost  at  Tennis,"  shows  no  lack  of  homely  humor 
and  invention :  and  in  the  others  there  is  as  much 
waste  of  fine  flowing  verse  and  facile  fancy  as  ever 
excited  the  rational  regret  of  a  modem  reader  at 
the  reckless  profusion  of  literary  power  which  the 
great  poets  of  the  time  were  content  to  lavish  on 
the  decoration  or  exposition  of  an  ephemeral 
pageant.  Of  Middleton's  other  minor  works, 
apocryphal  or  genuine,  I  will  only  say  that  his 
authorship  of  "  Microcynicon  " — a  dull  and  crab- 
bed imitation  of  Marston's  worst  work  as  a  satir- 
ist— seems  to  me  utterly  incredible.   A  lucid  and 


i»o 


THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 


melodious  fluency  of  style  is  the  mark  of  all  his 
metrical  writing ;  and  this  stupid  piece  of  obscure 
and  clumsy  jargon  could  have  been  the  work  of 
no  man  endowed  with  more  faculty  of  expres- 
sion than  informs  or  modulates  the  whine  of 
an  average  pig.  Nor  is  it  rationally  conceivable 
that  the  Thomas  Middleton  who  soiled  some 
reams  of  paper  with  what  he  was  pleased  to  con- 
sider or  to  call  a  paraphrase  of  the  "Wisdom  of 
Solomon"  can  have  had  anything  but  a  poet's 
name  in  common  with  a  poet.  This  name  is  not 
like  that  of  the  great  writer  whose  name  is  at- 
tached to  "The  Transformed  Metamorphosis": 
there  can  hardly  have  been  two  Cyril  Toumeurs 
in  the  field,  but  there  may  well  have  been  half 
a  dozen  Thomas  Middletons.  And  Toumeur's 
abortive  attempt  at  allegoric  discourse  is  but  a 
preposterous  freak  of  prolonged  eccentricity :  this 
paraphrase  is  simply  a  tideless  and  interminable 
sea  of  limitless  and  inexhaustible  drivel.  There 
are  three  reasons — two  of  them  considerable,  but 
the  third  conclusive — for  assigning  to  Middleton 
the  two  satirical  tracts  in  the  style  of  Nash,  or 
rather  of  Dekker,  which  appeared  in  the  same 
year  with  his  initials  subscribed  to  their  pref- 
atory addresses.  Mr.  Dyce  thought  they  were 
written  by  the  poet  whose  ready  verse  and 
realistic  humor  are  both  well  represented  in  their 


THOMAS    MIDDLETON  i8i 

text:  Mr.  Bullcn  agrees  with  Mr.  Dyce  in  think- 
ing that  they  are  the  work  of  Middleton.  And 
Mr.  Carew  Hazlitt  thinks  that  they  are  not. 

No  such  absolute  and  final  evidence  as  this  can 
be  adduced  in  favor  or  disfavor  of  the  theory 
which  would  saddle  the  reputation  of  Middleton 
with  the  authorship  of  a  dull  and  disjointed 
comedy,  the  work  (it  has  hitherto  been  supposed) 
of  the  German  substitute  for  Shakespeare.  Mid- 
dleton has  no  doubt  left  us  more  crude  and 
shapeless  plays  than  "The  Puritan";  none,  in 
my  opinion — excepting  always  his  very  worst 
authentic  example  of  farce  or  satire,  "The  Family 
of  Love" — so  heavy  and  so  empty  and  so  feeble. 
If  it  must  be  assigned  to  any  author  of  higher 
rank  than  the  new  Shakespeare,  I  would  suggest 
that  it  is  much  more  like  Rowley's  than  like 
Middleton 's  worst  work.  Of  the  best  qualities 
which  distinguish  either  of  these  writers  as  poet 
or  as  humorist,  it  has  not  the  shadow  or  the 
glimmer  of  a  vestige. 

In  the  last  and  the  greatest  work  w^hich  bears 
their  united  names — a  work  which  should  suffice 
to  make  either  name  immortal  if  immortality 
were  other  than  an  accidental  attribute  of  genius 
— the  very  highest  capacity  of  either  poet  is  seen 
at  its  very  best.  There  is  more  of  mere  poetry, 
more  splendor  of  style  and  vehemence  of  verbal 


i82         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

inspiration,  in  the  work  of  other  poets  then  writ- 
ing for  the  stage:  the  two  masterpieces  of  Web- 
ster are  higher  in  tone  at  their  highest,  more  im- 
aginative and  more  fascinating  in  their  expres- 
sion of  terrible  or  of  piteous  truth:  there  are 
more  superb  harmonies,  more  glorious  raptures 
of  ardent  and  eloquent  music,  in  the  sometimes 
unsurpassed  and  unsurpassable  poetic  passion  of 
Cyril  Toumeur.  But  even  Webster's  men  seem 
but  splendid  sketches,  as  Toumeur's  seem  but 
shadowy  or  fiery  outlines,  beside  the  perfect  and 
living  figure  of  De  Flores.  The  man  is  so  horribly 
human,  so  fearfully  and  wonderfully  natural,  in 
his  single-hearted  brutality  of  devotion,  his  ab- 
solute absorption  of  soul  and  body  by  one  con- 
suming force  of  passionately  cynical  desire,  that 
we  must  go  to  Shakespeare  for  an  equally  original 
and  an  equally  unquestionable  revelation  of  in- 
dubitable truth.  And  in  no  play  by  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher  is  the  concord  between  the  two 
partners  more  singularly  complete  in  unity  of 
spirit  and  of  style  than  throughout  the  tragic 
part  of  this  play.  The  underplot  from  which  it 
most  unluckily  and  absurdly  derives  its  title  is 
very  stupid,  rather  coarse,  and  almost  vulgar: 
but  the  two  great  parts  of  Beatrice  and  De  Flores 
are  equally  consistent,  coherent,  and  sustained 
in  the  scenes  obviously  written  by  Middleton  and 


THOMAS   MIDDLETON  183 

in  the  scenes  obviously  written  by  Rowley.  The 
subordinate  part  taken  by  Middleton  in  Dekker's 
play  of  "The  Honest  Whore"  is  difficult  to  dis- 
cern from  the  context  or  to  verify  by  inner  evi- 
dence: though  some  likeness  to  his  realistic  or 
photographic  method  may  be  admitted  as  per- 
ceptible in  the  admirable  picture  of  Bellafront's 
morning  reception  at  the  opening  of  the  second 
act  of  the  first  part.  But  here  we  may  assert 
with  fair  confidence  that  the  first  and  the  last 
scenes  of  the  play  bear  the  indisputable  sign- 
manual  of  William  Rowley.  His  vigorous  and 
vivid  genius,  his  somewhat  hard  and  curt  direct- 
ness of  style  and  manner,  his  clear  and  trenchant 
power  of  straightforward  presentation  or  exposi- 
tion, may  be  traced  in  every  line  as  plainly  as  the 
hand  of  Middleton  must  be  recognized  in  the  main 
part  of  the  tragic  action  intervening.  To  Rowley, 
therefore,  must  be  assigned  the  very  high  credit  of 
introducing  and  of  dismissing  wath  adequate  and 
even  triumphant  effect  the  strangely  original 
tragic  figure  which  owes  its  fullest  and  finest  de- 
velopment to  the  genius  of  Middleton.  To  both 
poets  alike  must  unqualified  and  equal  praise  be 
given  for  the  subtle  simplicity  of  skill  with  which 
they  make  us  appreciate  the  fatal  and  fore- 
ordained affinity  between  the  ill-favored,  rough- 
mannered,    broken-down    gentleman    and    the 


i§4        THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

headstrong,  unscrupulous,  unobservant  girl  whose 
very  abhorrence  of  him  serves  only  to  fling  her 
down  from  her  high  station  of  haughty  beauty 
into  the  very  clutch  of  his  ravenous  and  pitiless 
passion.  Her  cry  of  horror  and  astonishment  at 
first  perception  of  the  price  to  be  paid  for  a 
Service  she  had  thought  to  purchase  with  mere 
money  is  so  wonderfully  real  in  its  artless  and 
ingenuous  sincerity  that  Shakespeare  himself 
could  hardly  have  bettered  it: 

Why,   'tis  impossible  thou  canst  be  so  wicked, 

And  shelter  such  a  cunning  cruelty, 

To  make  his  death  the  murderer  of  my  honor! 

That  note  of  incredulous  amazement  that  the 
man  whom  she  has  just  instigated  to  the  commis- 
sion of  murder  "can  be  so  wicked"  as  to  have 
served  her  ends  for  any  end  of  his  own  beyond 
the  pay  of  a  professional  assassin  is  a  touch 
worthy  of  the  greatest  dramatist  that  ever  lived. 
The  perfect  simplicity  of  expression  is  as  notable 
as  the  perfect  innocence  of  her  surprise;  the 
candid  astonishment  of  a  nature  absolutely  in- 
capable of  seeing  more  than  one  thing  or  holding 
more  than  one  thought  at  a  time.  That  she,  the 
first  criminal,  should  be  honestly  shocked  as  well 
as  physically  horrified  by  revelation  of  the  real 
motive  which  impelled  her  accomplice  into  crime, 


THOMAS   MIDDLETON  185 

gives  a  lurid  streak  of  tragic  humor  to  the  Hfe- 
like  interest  of  the  scene;  as  the  pure  infusion  of 
spontaneous  poetry  throughout  redeems  the  whole 
work  from  the  charge  of  vulgar  subsen,'ience  to 
a  vulgar  taste  for  the  presentation  or  the  con- 
templation of  criminal  horror.  Instances  of  this 
happy  and  natural  nobility  of  instinct  abound  in 
the  casual  expressions  which  give  grace  and  ani- 
mation always,  but  never  any  touch  of  rhetorical 
transgression  or  florid  superfluity,  to  the  brief 
and  trenchant  sword-play  of  the  tragic  dialogue : 

That  sigh  would  fain  have  utterance:  take  pity  on't, 
And  lend  it  a  free  word;  'las,  how  it  labors 
For  liberty!     I  hear  the  murmur  yet 
Beat  at  your  bosom. 

The  wording  of  this  passage  is  suflicient  to 
attest  the  presence  and  approve  the  quality  of  a 
poet :  the  manner  and  the  moment  of  its  introduc- 
tion would  be  enough  to  show  the  instinctive  and 
inborn  insight  of  a  natural  dramatist.  As  much 
may  be  said  of  the  few  words  which  give  us  a 
ghostly  glimpse  of  supernatural  terror: 

Ha!  what  art  thou  that  tak'st  away  the  light 
Betwixt  that  star  and  me!  I  dread  thee  not: 
'Twas  but  a  mist  of  conscience. 

But  the  real  power  and  genius  of  the  work 

cannot  be  shown  by  extracts — not  even  by  such 
13 


i86  THE  AGE  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

extracts  as  these.  His  friend  and  colleague 
Dekker  shows  to  better  advantage  by  the  proc- 
ess of  selection:  hardly  one  of  his  plays  leaves 
so  strong  and  sweet  an  impression  of  its  general 
and  complete  excellence  as  of  separate  scenes  or 
passages  of  tender  and  delicate  imagination  or 
emotion  beyond  the  reach  of  Middleton:  but  the 
tragic  unity  and  completeness  of  conception 
which  distinguish  this  masterpiece  will  be  sought 
in  vain  among  the  less  firm  and  solid  figures  of 
his  less  serious  and  profound  invention.  Had 
"The  Changeling"  not  been  preserved,  we  should 
not  have  known  Middleton:  as  it  is,  we  are  more 
than  justified  in  asserting  that  a  critic  who  denies 
him  a  high  place  among  the  poets  of  England 
must  be  not  merely  ignorant  of  the  qualities 
which  involve  a  right  or  confer  a  claim  to  this 
position,  but  incapable  of  curing  his  ignorance 
by  any  process  of  study.  The  rough  and  rapid 
work  which  absorbed  too  much  of  this  poet's 
time  and  toil  seems  almost  incongruous  with  the 
impression  made  by  the  noble  and  thoughtful 
face,  so  full  of  gentle  dignity  and  earnest  com- 
posure, in  which  we  recognize  the  graver  and 
loftier  genius  of  a  man  worthy  to  hold  his  own 
beside  all  but  the  greatest  of  his  age.  And  that 
age  was  the  age  of  Shakespeare, 


WILLIAM   ROWLEY 

Of  all  the  poets  and  humorists  who  lit  up  the 
London  stage  for  half  a  centur^^  of  unequalled 
glory,  William  Rowley  was  the  most  thoroughly 
loyal  Londoner:  the  most  evidently  and  proudly 
mindful  that  he  was  a  citizen  of  no  mean  city.  I 
have  always  thought  that  this  must  have  been  the 
conscious  or  unconscious  source  of  the  strong  and 
profound  interest  w^hich  his  very  remarkable  and 
original  genius  had  the  good -fortune  to  evoke 
from  the  sympathies  of  Charles  Lamb.  That 
divine  cockney,  if  the  word  may  be  used — and 
"why  in  the  name  of  glory,"  to  borrow  the  phrase 
of  another  immortal  fellow -townsman,  should 
it  not  be? — as  a  term  of  no  less  honor  than 
Yorkshireman  or  Northumbrian,  Comishman  or 
Welshman,  has  lavished  upon  Rowley  such  cor- 
dial and  such  manfully  sympathetic  praise  as 
would  suffice  to  preserve  and  to  immortalize 
the  name  of  a  far  lesser  man  and  a  far  feebler 
workman  in  tragedy  or  comedy,  poetry  or  prose. 

If  Lamb  had  known  and  read  the  first  work 


i88         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

published  by  Rowley,  it  is  impossible  to  imagine 
that  it  would  not  have  been  honored  by  the 
tribute  of  some  passing  and  priceless  word.  Why 
it  has  never  been  reissued  (except  in  a  private 
reprint  for  the  Percy  Society)  among  the  many 
less  deserving  and  less  interesting  revivals  from 
the  apparently  and  not  really  ephemeral  litera- 
ture of  its  day  would  be  to  me  an  insoluble 
problem,  if  I  were  so  ignorant  as  never  to  have 
realized  the  too  obvious  fact  that  chance,  pure 
and  simple  chance,  guides  or  misguides  the  in- 
telligence, and  suggests  or  fails  to  suggest,  the 
duty  of  scholars  and  of  students  who  have  given 
time  and  thought  to  such  far  from  unimportant 
or  insignificant  matters.  "A  Search  for  Money; 
or,  a  Quest  for  the  Wandering  Knight  Monsieur 
L 'Argent,"  is  not  comparable  with  the  best 
pamphlets  of  Nash  or  of  Dekker:  a  competent 
reader  of  those  admirable  improvisations  will  at 
the  first  opening  feel  inclined  to  regard  it  as  a 
feeble  and  servile  imitation  of  their  quaint  and 
obsolescent  manner;  but  he  will  soon  find  an 
original  and  a  vigorous  vein  of  native  humor  in 
their  comrade  or  their  disciple.  The  seekers  af- 
ter the  wandering  knight,  bafifled  in  their  search 
on  shore,  are  compelled  to  recognize  the  sad  fact 
that  "the  sea  is  lunatic,  and  mad  folks  keep  no 
money,  he  would  sink  if  he  were  there."     The 


WILLIAM    ROWLEY  189 

description  of  an  usurer  is  memorable  by  its 
reference  to  the  first  great  poet  of  England, 
among  whose  followers  Rowley  is  far  from  the 
least  worthy  of  honor.  ' '  His  visage  (or  vizard) , 
like  the  artificial  Jew  of  Malta's  nose,"  brings 
before  the  reader  in  vivid  realism  the  likeness  of 
Alleyn  or  Burbage  as  he  represented  in  grotesque 
and  tragic  disguise  the  magnificent  figure  of 
Marlowe's  creative  invention  or  discovery  by 
dint  of  genius.  (I  do  not  remember  the  curious 
verb  "to  rand"  except  in  this  little  book:  "he 
randed  out  these  sentences":  I  presume  it  to  be 
the  first  form  of  "rant.")  The  account  of  St. 
Paul's  in  1609  is  very  curious  and  scandalous: 
"the  very  Temple  itself  (in  bare  humility)  stood 
without  his  cap,  and  so  had  stood  many  years, 
many  good  folks  had  spoke  for  him  because  he 
could  not  speak  for  himself,  and  somewhat  had 
been  gathered  in  his  behalf,  but  not  half  enough 
to  supply  his  necessity." 

When  we  pass  from  "the  Temple"  to  West- 
minster Hall  we  come  upon  a  sample  of  humor 
which  would  be  famous  if  it  were  the  gift  of  a  less 
ungratefully  forgotten  hand. 

' '  Here  were  two  brothers  at  buffets  with  angels 
in  their  fists  about  the  thatch  that  blew  off  his 
house  into  the  other's  garden  and  so  spoiled  a 
Hartichoke." 


I90         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

It  should  not  have  been  left  to  a  later  hand — 
it  should  surely  have  been  the  privilege  of  Lamb's 
or  Hazlitt's,  and  perhaps  rather  Hazlitt's  than 
even  Lamb's — to  unearth  and  to  transcribe  the 
quaint  and  spirited  description  of  Thames  water- 
men "howling,  hollowing,  and  calling  for  pas- 
sengers, as  if  all  the  hags  in  hell  had  been  im- 
prisoned, and  begging  at  the  gate,  fiends  and 
furies  that  (God  be  thanked)  could  vex  the  soul 
but  not  torment  it,  yet  indeed  their  most  power 
was  over  the  body,  for  here  an  audacious  mouth- 
ing -  randing  -  impudent  -  scullery  -  wastecoat-and- 
bodied  rascal  would  have  hail'd  a  penny  from 
us  for  his  scullerships." 

Could  Rabelais  himself  have  described  them 
better,  or  with  vigor  of  humorous  expression 
more  heartily  and  enjoyably  characteristic  of  his 
own  all  but  incomparable  genius? 

The  good  old  times,  as  remote  in  Shake- 
speare's day  as  in  our  own,  were  never  more 
delightfully  described  than  by  Rowley  in  this 
noble  and  simple  phrase:  "Then  was  England's 
whole  year  but  a  St.  George's  day." 

Webster  wished  that  what  he  wrote  might  be 
read  by  the  light  of  Shakespeare:  an  admirer  of 
Rowley  might  hope  and  must  wish  that  he  should 
be  read  by  the  light  of  Lamb.  His  comedies 
have  real  as  well  as  realistic  merit:  not  equal  to 


WILLIAM    ROWLEY  191 

that  "of  Dekker's  or  Middleton's  at  their  best,  but 
usually  not  far  inferior  to  He^n^'ood's  or  to  theirs. 
The  first  of  them,  "A  New  Wonder:  A  Woman 
Never  Vext,"  has  received  such  immortal  honor 
from  the  loving  hand  of  Lamb  that  perhaps  the 
one  right  thing  to  say  of  it  would  be  an  adapta- 
tion of  a  Catholic  formula:  "Agnus  locutus  est: 
causa  finita  est."  The  realism  is  so  thorough  as  to 
make  the  interest  something  more  than  historical : 
and  historically  it  is  so  valuable  as  well  as  amus- 
ing that  a  reasonable  student  may  overlook  the 
offensive  "mingle-mangle"  of  prose  and  verse 
which  cannot  but  painfully  affect  the  nerves  of 
all  not  congenitally  insensitive  readers,  as  it  sure- 
ly must  have  ground  and  grated  on  the  ears  of  an 
audience  accustomed  to  enjoy  the  prose  as  well  as 
the  verse  of  Shakespeare  and  his  kind.  No  graver 
offence  can  be  committed  or  conceived  by  a 
writer  with  any  claim  to  any  but  contemptuous 
remembrance  than  this  debasement  of  the  cur- 
rency of  verse. 

The  character  of  Robert  Foster  is  so  noble  and 
attractive  in  its  selfless  and  manful  simplicity  that 
it  gives  us  and  leaves  with  us  a^ore  cordial  sense 
of  sympathetic  regard  and  respect  for  his  creator 
than  we  could  feel  if  this  gallant  and  homely 
figure  were  withdrawn  from  the  stage  of  his  in- 
vention.    The  female  Polycrates  who  suffers  un  - 


192         THE    AGE   OF    SHAKESPEARE 

der  the  curse  of  inevitable  and  intolerable  good- 
fortune  is  an  admirable  creature  of  broad  comedy 
that  never  subsides  or  overflows  or  degenerates 
into  farce. 

"A  Match  at  Midnight"  is  as  notable  for  vivid 
impression  of  reality,  but  not  so  likely  to  leave  a 
good  taste — as  Charlotte  Bronte  might  have  said 
— in  the  reader's  mouth.  Ancient  Young,  the 
hero,  is  a  fine  fellow;  but  Messrs.  Earlack  and 
Carvegut  are  hardly  amusing  enough  to  reconcile 
us  to  toleration  of  such  bad  company.  It  is 
cleverly  composed,  and  the  crosses  and  chances  of 
the  night  are  ingeniously  and  effectively  invented 
and  arranged:  there  is  real  and  good  broad 
humor  in  the  parts  of  the  usurer  and  his  sons 
and  the  attractive  but  unwidowed  Widow  Wag. 
And  I  am  not  only  free  to  admit  but  desirous  to 
remark  that  a  juster  and  more  valuable  judg- 
ment on  such  plays  as  these  than  any  that  I 
could  undertake  to  deliver  may  very  possibly  be 
expected  from  readers  whom  they  may  more 
thoroughly  arride — to  use  a  favorite  phrase  of 
the  all  but  impeccable  critic,  the  all  but  infallible 
judge,  whose  praise  has  set  the  name  of  Rowley 
so  high  in  the  rank  of  realistic  painters  and 
historic  naturalists  forever. 

The  copies  of  two  dramatic  nondescripts  now 
happily   preserved   and   duly   treasured   in   the 


WILLIAM    ROWLEY  193 

library  of  the  British  Museum  bear  inscribed  in 
the  same  old  hand,  at  the  head  of  the  first  page 
and  again  on  the  last  page  under  the  last  line, 
the  same  contemptuous  three  words — "silly  old 
story."  And  I  fear  it  can  hardly  be  maintained 
that  either  Chapman,  when  writing  "The  Blind 
Beggar  of  Alexandria,"  or  Rowley,  when  writing 
"A  Shoemaker,  a  Gentleman,"  was  engaged  in 
any  very  rational  or  felicitous  employment  of  his 
wayward  and  unregulated  powers .  ' '  The  Printer" 
of  the  play  last  named  assures  "the  Reader" 
of  1638,  whom  he  assumes  to  be  a  member  of  the 
gentle  craft,  that  "as  plays  were  then,  some 
twenty  years  agone,  it  was  in  the  fashion."  A 
singular  fashion,  the  rare  modem  reader  will 
probably  reflect:  especially  when  he  remembers 
how  far  finer  and  how  thoroughly  charming  a 
tribute  of  dramatic  and  poetic  celebration  had 
been  paid  full  eighteen  years  earlier  to  the  same 
favored  craft  by  the  sweeter  and  rarer  genius  of 
Dekker.  This  quaintly  apologetic  assurance  of 
by-gone  popularity  in  subject  and  in  style  will 
remind  all  probable  readers  of  Heywood's  pro- 
logue to  "The  Royal  King  and  Loyal  Subject," 
and  his  dedicatory  address  prefixed  to  * '  The  Four 
Prentices  of  London."  It  happily  was  not,  how- 
ever, in  the  printer's  power  to  aver  that  such 
impudently  immetrical  verse  as  Rowley  at  once 


194         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

breaks  ground  with  was  ever  in  fashion  with  any 
of  his  famous  fellows.  Nothing  can  be  worse 
than  the  headlong  and  slipshod  stumble  of 
Dekker's  at  its  worst;  but  his  were  the  faults 
of  hurry  and  impatience  and  shamefully  scamped 
work:  Rowley's,  if  I  mistake  not,  is  the  far  graver 
error  of  a  preposterous  theory  that  broken  verse, 
rough  and  untunable  as  the  shock  of  short  chop- 
ping waves,  is  more  dramatic  and  liker  the  natural 
speech  of  men  and  women  than  the  rolling  and 
flowing  verse  of  Marlowe  and  of  Shakespeare: 
which  is  as  much  liker  life  as  it  is  nobler  and 
more  satisfying  in  workmanship.  In  reading 
bad  verse  the  reader  is  constantly  reminded  that 
he  is  not  reading  good  prose;  and  this  is  not 
the  effect  produced  by  true  realism — the  impres- 
sion left  by  actual  intercourse  or  faithful  presen- 
tation of  it. 

The  hagiology  of  this  eccentric  play  is  more 
like  Shirley's  in  "St.  Patrick  for  Ireland"  than 
Dekker's  and  Massinger's  in  "The  Virgin  Martyr." 
Assuredly  there  is  here  nothing  like  the  one  in- 
comparably lovely  dialogue  of  Dorothea  with  her 
attendant  angel.  But  there  is  the  charm  of  a 
curious  simplicity  and  sincerity  in  Rowley's 
straightforward  and  homely  dramatic  handling 
of  the  supernatural  element:  in  the  miracle  of 
St.  Winifred's  well,  and  the  conversion  of  Albon 


WILLIAM    ROWLEY  195 

into  St.  Alban  by  "that  seminary  knight,"  as  the 
tyrant  Maximinus  rather  comically  calls  him, 
Amphiabel  Prince  of  Wales.  The  courtship  of 
the  princely  Offa,  while  disguised  as  the  shoe- 
maker's apprentice  Crispinus,  by  the  Roman 
Princess  Laodice,  daughter  of  Maximinus,  is  very 
lively  and  dramatic:  the  sprightliest  scene,  I 
should  say,  ever  played  out  on  the  stage  of 
Rowley's  fancy.  On  the  other  hand,  the  martyr- 
dom of  St.  Winifred  and  St.  Hugh  is  an  abject 
tragic  failure ;  an  abortive  attempt  at  cheap  terror 
and  jingling  pity,  followed  up  by  doggrel  farce  of 
intolerable  grossness. 

This  play  is  a  perfect  repertory  of  slang  and 
quaint  phrases:  as  when  the  master  shoemaker, 
who  has  for  apprentices  two  persecuted  princes 
in  disguise,  and  is  a  very  inferior  imitation  of 
Dekker's  admirable  Simon  Eyre,  calls  his  wife 
Lady  d'Oliva — whatever  that  may  mean,  and 
when  she  inquires  of  one  of  the  youngsters, 
"What's  the  matter,  boy?  Why  are  so  many 
chancery  bills  drawn  in  thy  face?"  Habent  sua 
fata  libelli:  it  is  inexplicable  that  this  most  curious 
play  should  never  have  been  republished,  when 
the  volumes  of  Dodsley's  Old  Plays,  in  their  very 
latest  reissue,  are  encumbered  with  heaps  of  such 
leaden  dulness  and  such  bestial  filth  as  no  de- 
cent scavenger  and  no  rational  nightman  would 


196         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

have  dreamed  of  sweeping  back  into  sight  and 
smell  of  any  possible  reader. 

But  it  is  or  it  should  be  inconceivable  and  in- 
credible that  the  masterpiece  of  Rowley's  strong 
and  singular  genius,  a  play  remarkable  for  its 
peculiar  power  or  fusion  of  strange  powers  even 
in  the  sovereign  age  of  Shakespeare,  should  have 
waited  upward  of  three  hundred  years  and 
should  still  be  waiting  for  the  appearance  of  a 
second  edition.  The  tragedy  of  "All's  Lost  by 
Lust,"  published  in  the  same  year  with  Shake- 
speare's great  posthumous  torso  of  romantic 
tragedy,  was  evidently  a  favorite  child  of  its 
author's:  the  terse  and  elaborate  argument  sub- 
joined to  the  careful  and  exhaustive  list  of  charac- 
ters may  suffice  to  prove  it.  Among  these  char- 
acters we  may  note  that  one,  "a  simple  clown- 
ish Gentleman,"  was  "personated  by  the  poet": 
and  having  noted  it,  we  cannot  but  long,  with  a 
fruitless  longing,  for  such  confidences  as  to  the 
impersonation  of  the  leading  characters  in  other 
memorable  plays  of  the  period.  There  is  some 
really  good  rough  humor  in  the  part  of  this  honest 
clown  and  his  fellows;  but  no  duly  appreciative 
reader  will  doubt  that  the  author's  heart  was  in 
the  work  devoted  to  the  tragic  and  poetic  scenes 
of  a  play  which  shows  that  the  natural  bent  of  his 
powers  was  toward  tragedy  rather  than  comedy. 


WILLIAM    ROWLEY  197 

Alike  as  poet  and  as  dramatist,  he  rises  far  higher 
and  enjoys  his  work  far  more  when  the  aim  of  his 
flight  is  toward  the  effects  of  imaginative  terror 
and  pity  than  when  it  is  confined  to  the  effects  of 
humorous  or  pathetic  realism.  In  the  very  first 
scene  we  breathe  the  air  of  tragic  romance  and 
imminent  evil  provoked  by  coalition  rather  than 
collision  of  the  will  of  man  with  the  doom  of 
destiny ;  and  the  king's  defiance  of  prophecy  and 
tradition  is  so  admirably  rendered  or  suggested  as 
a  sign  of  brutal  and  egotistic  rather  than  chival- 
rous or  manful  daring  as  to  prepare  the  way  with 
great  dramatic  and  poetic  skill  for  the  subsequent 
scenes  of  attempted  seduction  and  ultimate  viola- 
tion. With  these  the  underplot,  interesting  and 
original  in  itself,  well  conceived  and  well  carried 
through,  is  happily  and  naturally  intenvoven. 
The  noble  soliloquy  of  the  invading  and  defeated 
Moorish  king  is  by  grace  of  Lamb  familiar  to 
all  true  lovers  of  the  higher  dramatic  poetry  of 
England.  Nothing  can  be  livelier  and  more 
natural  than  the  scenes  in  which  a  recent  bride- 
groom's heart  is  won  from  his  loving  and  low- 
bom  wife  by  the  offered  hand  and  the  sprightly 
seductions  of  a  light-hearted  and  high-bom  rival. 
But  the  crowning  scene  of  the  play  and  the  crown- 
ing grace  of  the  poem  is  the  interview  of  father 
and  daughter  after  the  consummation  of  the  crime 


198         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

which  gave  Spain  into  the  hand  of  the  Moor. 
The  vivid  dramatic  Hfe  in  every  word  is  even 
more  admirable  than  the  great  style,  the  high 
poetic  spirit  of  the  scene.  I  have  always  ventured 
to  wonder  that  Lamb,  whose  admiration  has  made 
it  twice  immortal,  did  not  select  as  a  companion 
or  a  counterpart  to  it  that  other  great  camp 
scene  from  Webster's  "Appius  and  Virginia"  in 
which  another  outraged  warrior  and  father  stirs 
up  his  friends  and  fellow-soldiers  to  vindication 
of  his  honor  and  revenge  for  his  wrong.  It  is 
surely  even  finer  and  more  impressive  than  that 
selected  in  preference  to  it,  which  closes  with  the 
immolation  of  Virginia. 

The  scenes  in  which  the  tragic  underplot  of 
Rowley's  tragedy  is  deftly  and  effectively  wound 
up  are  full  of  living  action  and  passion;  that 
especially  in  which  the  revenge  of  a  deserted  wife 
is  wreaked  mistakingly  on  the  villanous  minion 
to  whose  instigation  she  owes  the  infidelity  of  the 
husband  for  whom  she  mistakes  him.  The  gross 
physical  horrors  which  deform  the  close  of  a 
noble  poem  are  relieved  if  not  beautified  by  the 
great  style  of  its  age  —  an  age  unparalleled  in 
wealth  and  variety  of  genius,  a  style  unmatchable 
for  its  union  of  inspired  and  imaginative  dignity 
with  actual  and  vivid  reality  of  impassioned  and 
loftv  life. 


WILLIAM    ROWLEY  199 

No  comparison  is  possible,  nor  if  possible  could 
it  be  profitable,  between  the  somewhat  rough- 
hewn  English  oak  of  Rowley's  play  and  the  flaw- 
less Roman  steel  of  Landor's  great  Miltonic 
tragedy  on  the  same  subject.  The  fervent  praise 
of  Southey  was  not  too  generous  to  be  just  in  its 
estimate  of  that  austere  masterpiece ;  it  is  lament- 
able to  remember  the  injustice  of  its  illustrious 
author  to  the  men  of  Shakespeare's  day.  I  fear 
he  would  certainly  not  have  excepted  the  noble 
work  of  his  precursor  from  his  general  condemna- 
tion or  impreachment  of  ' '  their  bloody  bawdries ' ' 
— a  misjudgment  gross  enough  for  Hallam — or 
Voltaire  when  declining  to  the  level  of  a  Hallam. 
Landor  was  as  headlong  as  these  were  hidebound, 
as  fitful  as  they  were  futile ;  but  not  even  the  dis- 
praise or  the  disrelish  of  a  finer  if  not  of  a  greater 
dramatic  poet  could  aftect  the  credit  or  impair 
the  station  of  one  on  whose  merits  the  final 
sentence  of  appreciation  has  been  irrevocably 
pronounced  by  the  verdict  of  Charles  Lamb. 


THOMAS   HEYWOOD 

If  it  is  difficult  to  write  at  all  on  any  subject 
once  ennobled  by  the  notice  of  Charles  Lamb 
without  some  apprehensive  sense  of  intrusion  and 
presumption,  least  of  all  may  we  venture  without 
fear  of  trespass  upon  ground  so  consecrated  by 
his  peculiar  devotion  as  the  spacious  if  homely 
province  or  demesne  of  the  dramatist  whose 
highest  honor  it  is  to  have  earned  from  the  finest 
of  all  critics  the  crowning  tribute  of  a  sympathy 
which  would  have  induced  him  to  advise  an  in- 
tending editor  or  publisher  of  the  dramatists  of 
the  Shakespearean  age  to  begin  by  a  reissue  of  the 
works  of  Hey  wood.  The  depth  and  width  of  his 
knowledge,  the  subtlety  and  the  sureness  of  his 
intuition,  place  him  so  far  ahead  of  any  other 
critic  or  scholar  who  has  ever  done  any  stroke  of 
work  in  any  part  of  the  same  field  that  it  may 
seem  overbold  for  any  such  subordinate  to  express 
or  to  suggest  a  suspicion  that  this  counsel  would 
have  been  rather  the  expression  of  a  personal  and 
a  partly  accidental  sympathy  than  the  result  of  a 


THOxMAS   HEY  WOOD  201 

critical  and  a  purely  rational  consideration.  And 
yet  I  can  hardly  think  it  questionable  that  it  must 
have  been  less  the  poetic  or  essential  merit  than 
the  casual  or  incidental  associations  of  Hey- 
wood's  work  which  excited  so  exceptional  an 
enthusiasm  in  so  excellent  a  judge.  For  as  a 
matter  of  fact  it  must  be  admitted  that  in  one 
instance  at  least  the  objections  of  the  carper 
Hazlitt  are  better  justified  than  the  commenda- 
tions of  the  finer  and  more  appreciative  critic. 
The  rancorous  democrat  who  shared  with  Byron 
the  infamy  of  sympathetic  admiration  for  the 
enemy  of  England  and  the  tyrant  of  France 
found  for  once  an  apt  and  a  fair  occasion  to  vent 
his  spleen  against  the  upper  classes  of  his  coun- 
trymen in  criticism  of  the  underplot  of  Hey- 
wood's  most  celebrated  play.  Lamb,  thinking 
only  of  the  Frankfords,  Wincotts,  and  Geraldines, 
whose  beautiful  and  noble  characters  are  the 
finest  and  surest  witnesses  to  the  noble  and 
beautiful  nature  of  their  designer's,  observes  that 
"Hey wood's  characters,  his  country  gentlemen, 
etc.,  are  exactly  what  we  see  (but  of  the  best  kind 
of  what  we  see)  in  life."  But  such  country  gentle- 
men as  his  Actons  and  Mountfords  are  surely  of 
a  worse  than  the  worst  kind ;  more  cruel  or  more 
irrational,  more  base  or  more  perverse,  than  we 
need  fear  to  see  in  life  unless  our  experience  should 


202         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

be  exceptionally  unfortunate.  Lamb  indeed  is 
rather  an  advocate  than  a  judge  in  the  case  of  his 
fellow-Londoners  Thomas  Heywood  and  William 
Rowley ;  but  his  pleading  is  better  worth  our  at- 
tention than  the  summing  up  of  a  less  cordial  or 
less  competent  critic. 

From  critics  or  students  who  regard  with  an 
academic  smile  of  cultivated  contempt  the  love  for 
their  country  or  the  faith  in  its  greatness  which 
distinguished  such  poor  creatures  as  Virgil  and 
Dante,  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  Coleridge  and 
Wordsworth,  no  tolerance  can  be  expected  for  the 
ingrained  and  inveterate  provinciality  of  a  poet 
whose  devotion  to  his  homestead  was  not  merely 
that  of  an  Englishman  but  that  of  a  Londoner,  no 
less  fond  and  proud  of  his  city  than  of  his  country. 
The  quaint,  homely,  single-hearted  municipal 
loyalty  of  an  old-world  burgess,  conscious  of  his 
station  as  "a  citizen  of  no  mean  city,"  and  proud 
even  of  the  insults  which  provincials  might  fling 
at  him  as  a  cockney  or  aristocrats  as  a  tradesman, 
is  so  admirably  and  so  simply  expressed  in  the 
person  of  Heywood's  first  hero — the  first  in  date, 
at  all  events,  with  whom  a  modern  reader  can 
hope  to  make  acquaintance  —  that  the  nobly 
plebeian  pride  of  the  city  poet  is  as  unmistakably 
personal  as  the  tenderness  of  the  dramatic  artist 
who  has  made  the  last  night  of  the  little  princes 


THOMAS   HEYWOOD  203 

in  the  Tower  as  terribly  and  pathetically  real  for 
the  reader  as  Millais  has  made  it  for  the  specta- 
tor of  the  imminent  tragedy.  Why  Shakespeare 
shrank  from  the  presentation  of  it,  and  left  to  a 
humbler  hand  the  tragic  weight  of  a  subject  so 
charged  with  tenderness  and  terror,  it  might 
seem  impertinent  or  impossible  to  conjecture — 
except  to  those  who  can  perceive  and  appreciate 
the  intense  and  sensitive  love  of  children  which 
may  haply  have  made  the  task  distasteful  if 
not  intolerable:  but  it  is  certain  that  even  he 
could  hardly  have  made  the  last  words  of  the 
little  fellows  more  touchingly  and  sweetly  lifelike. 
Were  there  nothing  further  to  commend  in 
the  two  parts  of  the  historical  play  or  chronicle 
history  of  "  King  Edward  IV.,"  this  would  suffice 
to  show  that  the  dramatic  genius  of  Heywood  was 
not  unjustified  of  its  early  and  perilous  venture: 
but  the  hero  of  these  two  plays  is  no  royal  or 
noble  personage,  he  is  plain  Matthew  Shore  the 
goldsmith.  We  find  ourselves  at  once  in  what 
Coleridge  would  have  called  the  anachronic  at- 
mosphere of  Elizabethan  London;  our  poet  is  a 
champion  cockney,  whose  interest  is  really  much 
less  in  the  rise  and  fall  of  princes  than  in  the 
homely  loyalty  of  shopkeepers  and  the  sturdy 
gallantry  of  their  apprentices.  The  lively,  easy, 
honest  improvisation  of  the  opening  scenes  has  a 


204         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

certain  value  in  its  very  crudity  and  simplicity: 
the  homespun  rhetoric  and  the  jog-trot  jingle  are 
signs  at  once  of  the  date  and  of  the  class  to  which 
these  plays  must  be  referred.  The  parts  of  the 
rebels  are  rough-hewn  rather  than  vigorous;  the 
comic  or  burlesque  part  of  Josselin  is  very  cheap 
and  flimsy  farce.  The  peculiar  powers  of  Hey- 
wood  in  pathetic  if  not  in  humorous  writing  were 
still  in  abeyance  or  in  embryo.  Pathos  there  is 
of  a  true  and  manly  kind  in  the  leading  part  of 
Shore ;  but  it  has  little  or  nothing  of  the  poignant 
and  intense  tenderness  with  which  Heywood  was 
afterward  to  invest  the  similar  part  of  Frank- 
ford.  Humor  there  is  of  a  genuine  plain-spun 
kind  in  the  scenes  which  introduce  the  King 
as  the  guest  of  the  tanner;  Hobs  and  his  sur- 
roundings, Grudgen  and  Goodfellow,  are  present- 
ed with  a  comic  and  cordial  fidelity  which  the 
painter  of  Falstaff's ' '  villeggiatura,"  the  creator  of 
Shallow,  Silence,  and  Davy,  might  justly  and  con- 
ceivably have  approved.  It  is  rather  in  the  more 
serious  or  ambitious  parts  that  we  find  now  and 
then  a  pre-Shakespearean  immaturity  of  man- 
ner. The  recurrent  burden  of  a  jingling  couplet 
in  the  cajoleries  of  the  procuress  Mrs.  Blague  is  a 
survival  from  the  most  primitive  and  conven- 
tional form  of  dramatic  writing  not  yet  thorough- 
ly superseded  and  suppressed  by  the  successive 


THOMAS   HEYWOOD  205 

influences  of  Marlowe,  of  Shakespeare,  and  of 
Jonson ;  while  the  treatment  of  character  in  such 
scenes  as  that  between  Clarence,  Richard,  and 
Dr.  Shaw  is  crude  and  childish  enough  for  a 
rival  contemporary  of  Peele.  The  beautiful  and 
simple  part  of  Ayre,  a  character  worthy  to  have 
been  glorified  by  the  mention  and  commenda- 
tion of  Hey^vood's  most  devoted  and  most  illus- 
trious admirer,  is  typical  of  the  qualities  which 
Lamb  seems  to  have  found  most  lovable  in  the 
representative  characters  of  his  favorite  play- 
wright. 

In  that  prodigious  monument  of  learning  and 
labor,  Mr.  Fleay's  Biographical  Chronicle  of  the 
English  Drama,  the  common  attribution  of  these 
two  plays  to  Heywood  is  impeached  on  the 
aesthetic  score  that  "they  are  far  better  than  his 
other  early  work."  I  have  carefully  endeavored 
to  do  what  justice  might  be  done  to  their  modest 
allowance  of  moderate  merit;  but  whether  they 
be  Heywood's  or  —  as  Mr.  Fleay,  on  apparent 
grounds  of  documentary  evidence,  would  suggest 
— the  work  of  Chettle  and  Day,  I  am  certainly 
rather  inclined  to  agree  with  the  general  verdict 
of  previous  criticism,  which  would  hardly  admit 
their  equality  and  would  decidedly  question  their 
claim  to  anything  more  than  equality  of  merit 
with  the  least  admirable  or  memorable  of  Hey- 


2o6         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

wood's  other  plays.  Even  the  rough-hewn  chron- 
icle, "If  you  know  not  me  you  know  nobody," 
by  which  "the  troubles  of  Queen  Elizabeth" 
before  her  accession  are  as  nakedly  and  simply 
set  forth  in  the  first  part  as  in  the  second  are 
"the  building  of  the  Royal  Exchange"  and  "the 
famous  victory"  over  the  Invincible  Armada, 
has  on  the  whole  more  life  and  spirit,  more  in- 
terest and  movement,  in  action  as  in  style.  The 
class  of  play  to  which  it  belongs  is  historically 
the  most  curious  if  poetically  the  least  precious 
of  all  the  many  kinds  enumerated  by  Heywood 
in  earnest  or  by  Shakespeare  in  jest  as  popular  or 
ambitious  of  popularity  on  the  stage  for  which 
they  wrote.  Aristophanic  license  of  libel  or  cari- 
cature, more  or  less  ineffectually  trammelled  by 
the  chance  or  the  likelihood  of  prosecution  and 
repression,  is  common  under  various  forms  to 
various  ages  and  countries ;  but  the  serious  intro- 
duction and  presentation  of  contemporary  figures 
and  events  give  to  such  plays  as  these  as  mixed 
and  peculiar  a  quality  as  though  the  playwright's 
aim  or  ambition  had  been  to  unite  in  his  humble 
and  homespun  fashion  the  two  parts  of  an  epic  or 
patriotic  historian  and  a  political  or  social  cari- 
caturist; a  poet  and  a  pamphleteer  on  the  same 
page,  a  chronicler  and  a  jester  in  the  same  breath. 
Of  this  Elizabethan  chronicle  the  first  part  is  the 


THOMAS    HEYWOOD  207 

more  literal  and  prosaic  in  its  steady  servility  to 
actual  record  and  registered  fact:  the  bitterest 
enemy  of  poetic  or  dramatic  fiction,  from  William 
Pry^nne  to  Thomas  Carlyle,  might  well  exempt 
from  his  else  omnivorous  appetite  of  censure 
so  humble  an  example  of  such  obsequious  and 
unambitious  fidelity.  Of  fiction  or  imagination 
there  is  indeed  next  to  none.  In  Thomas  Drue's 
play  of  "The  Duchess  of  Suffolk,"  formerly  and 
plausibly  misattributed  to  He^'ivood,  part  of  the 
same  ground  is  gone  over  in  much  the  same 
fashion  and  to  much  the  same  effect;  but  the 
subject,  a  single  interlude  of  the  Marian  per- 
secution, has  more  unity  of  interest  than  can  be 
attained  by  any  play  running  on  the  same  line 
as  Hey^vood's,  from  the  opening  to  the  close  of 
the  most  hideous  episode  in  our  history.  That 
the  miserable  life  and  reign  of  Mary  Tudor  should 
have  been  "staged  to  the  show"  for  the  edifica- 
tion and  confirmation  of  her  half-sister's  subjects 
in  Protestant  and  patriotic  fidelity  of  animosity 
toward  Rome  and  Spain  is  less  remarkable  than 
that  the  same  hopelessly  improper  topic  for  his- 
torical drama  should  in  later  days  have  been 
selected  for  dramatic  treatment  by  English  writ- 
ers and  on  one  occasion  by  a  great  English  poet. 
As  there  are  within  the  range  of  any  country^'s 
history,  authentic    or    traditional,  periods    and 


2o8         THE    AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

characters  in  themselves  so  naturally  fit  and 
proper  for  transfiguration  by  poetry  that  the 
dramatist  who  should  attempt  to  improve  on  the 
truth — the  actual  or  imaginary  truth  accepted 
as  fact  with  regard  to  them — would  probably  if 
not  certainly  derogate  from  it,  so  are  there  oth- 
ers which  cannot  be  transfigured  without  trans- 
formation. Such  a  character  is  the  last  and 
wretchedest  victim  of  a  religious  reaction  which 
blasted  her  kingdom  with  the  hell-fire  of  reviving 
devil-worship,  and  her  name  with  the  ineffaceable 
brand  of  an  inseparable  and  damning  epithet. 
If  even  the  genius  of  Tennyson  could  not  make 
the  aspirations  and  the  agonies  of  Mary  as  ac- 
ceptable or  endurable  from  the  dramatic  or  poetic 
point  of  view  as  Marlowe  and  Shakespeare  could 
make  the  sufferings  of  such  poor  wretches  as  their 
Edward  II.  and  Richard  II.,  it  is  hardly  to  be 
expected  that  the  humbler  if  more  dramatic 
genius  of  Heywood  should  have  triumphed  over 
the  desperate  obstacle  of  a  subject  so  drearily 
repulsive :  but  it  is  curious  that  both  should  have 
attempted  to  tackle  the  same  hopeless  task  in  the 
same  fruitless  fashion.  The  "chronicle  history" 
of  Mary  Tudor,  had  Shakespeare's  self  attempted 
it,  could  scarcely  have  been  other — if  we  may 
judge  by  our  human  and  fallible  lights  of  the 
divine  possibilities  open  to  a  superhuman  and 


THOMAS    HEYWOOD  209 

infallible  intelligence — than  a  splendid  and  price- 
less failure  from  the  dramatic  or  poetic  point  of 
view.  The  one  chance  open  even  to  Shake- 
speare would  have  been  to  invent,  to  devise,  to 
create ;  not  to  modify,  to  adapt,  to  adjust.  Bloody 
Mary  has  been  transfigured  into  a  tragic  and 
poetic  malef actress :  but  only  by  the  most  au- 
dacious and  magnificent  defiance  of  history  and 
possibility.  Madonna  Lucrezia  Estense  Borgia 
(to  use  the  proper  ceremonial  style  adopted  for 
the  exquisitely  tender  and  graceful  dedication  of 
the  "Asolani")  died  peaceably  in  the  odor  of 
incense  offered  at  her  shrine  in  the  choicest  Latin 
verse  of  such  accomplished  poets  and  acolytes 
as  Pietro  Bembo  and  Ercole  Strozzi.  Nothing 
more  tragic  or  dramatic  could  have  been  made 
of  her  peaceful  and  honorable  end  than  of  the 
reign  of  Mary  Tudor  as  recorded  in  history.  The 
greatest  poet  and  dramatist  of  the  nineteenth 
century  has  chosen  to  immortalize  them  by 
violence — to  give  them  a  life,  or  to  give  a  life 
to  their  names,  which  history  could  not  give. 
Neither  he  nor  Shakespeare  could  have  kept 
faith  with  the  torpid  fact  and  succeeded  in  the 
creation  of  a  living  and  eternal  truth.  One  thing 
may  be  registered  to  the  credit,  not  indeed  of 
the  dramatist  or  the  poet,  but  certainly  of  the 
man  and  the  Englishman :  the  generous  fair  play 


2IO         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

shown  to  Philip  II.  in  the  scene  which  records 
his  impartial  justice  done  upon  the  Spanish  as- 
sassin of  an  English  victim.  There  is  a  charac- 
teristic manliness  about  Heywood's  patriotism 
which  gives  a  certain  adventitious  interest  to  his 
thinnest  or  homeliest  work  on  any  subject  admit- 
ting or  requiring  the  display  of  such  a  quality.  In 
the  second  and  superior  part  of  this  dramatic 
chronicle  it  informs  the  humbler  comic  parts  with 
more  life  and  spirit,  though  not  with  heartier 
devotion  of  good-will,  than  the  more  ambitious 
and  comparatively  though  modestly  high-flown 
close  of  the  play:  which  is  indeed  in  the  main 
rather  a  realistic  comedy  of  city  life,  w^ith  forced 
and  formal  interludes  of  historical  pageant  or 
event,  than  a  regular  or  even  an  irregular  his- 
torical drama.  Again  the  trusty  cockney  poet 
has  made  his  hero  and  protagonist  of  a  plain 
London  tradesman :  and  has  made  of  him  at  once 
a  really  noble  and  a  heartily  amusing  figure. 
His  better-bom  apprentice,  a  sort  of  Elizabethan 
Gil  Bias  or  Gusman  d'Alfarache,  would  be  an 
excellent  comic  character  if  he  had  been  a  little 
more  plausibly  carried  through  to  the  close  of  his 
versatile  and  venturous  career;  as  it  is,  the  farce 
becomes  rather  impudently  cheap ;  though  in  the 
earlier  passages  of  Parisian  trickery  and  buf- 
foonery there  is  a  note  of  broad  humor  which 


THOMAS    HEYWOOD  211 

may  remind  us  of  Moliere — not  of  course  the 
Moliere  of  Tartuffe,  but  the  Moliere  of  M.  de 
Pourceaugnac.  The  curious  alterations  made  in 
later  versions  of  the  closing  scene  are  sometimes 
though  not  generally  for  the  better. 

Lamb,  in  a  passage  which  no  reader  can  fail  to 
remember,  has  declared  that  "posterity  is  bound 
to  take  care"  (an  obligation,  I  fear,  of  a  kind 
which  posterity  is  very  far  from  careful  to  dis- 
charge) "that  a  writer  loses  nothing  by  such  a 
noble  modesty"  as  that  which  induced  Heywood 
to  set  as  little  store  by  his  dramatic  works  as 
could  have  been  desired  in  the  rascally  interest  of 
those  ' '  harlotry  players  "  who  thought  it,  forsooth, 
"against  their  peculiar  profit  to  have  them  come 
in  print."  But  I  am  not  sure  that  it  was  altogether 
a  noble  or  at  all  a  rational  modesty  which  made 
him  utter  the  avowal  or  the  vaunt:  "It  never 
was  any  great  ambition  in  me,  to  be  in  this  kind 
voluminously  read."  For,  eight  years  after  this 
well-known  passage  was  in  print,  when  publish- 
ing a  "  Chronographicall  Histor^^  of  all  the  Kings, 
and  memorable  passages  of  this  Kingdome,  from 
Brute  to  the  Reigne  of  our  Royall  Soveraigne 
King  Charles,"  he  offers,  on  arriving  at  the  ac- 
cession of  Elizabeth,  "an  apologie  of  the  Author" 
for  slurring  or  skipping  the  record  of  her  life  and 
times  in  a  curious  passage  which  curiously  omits 


212         THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

as  unworthy  of  mention  his  dramatic  work  on 
the  subject,  while  complacently  enumerating  his 
certainly  less  valuable  and  memorable  other 
tributes  to  the  great  queen's  fame  as  follows: 
"To  write  largely  of  her  troubles,  being  a  prin- 
cesse,  or  of  her  rare  and  remarkable  Reigne  after 
she  was  Queen,  I  should  but  feast  you  with  dyet 
twice  drest :  Having  my  self  e  published  a  discourse 
of  the  first :  from  her  cradle  to  her  crowne ;  and 
in  another  bearing  Title  of  the  nine  worthy 
Women:  she  being  the  last  of  the  rest  in  time 
and  place;  though  equall  to  any  of  the  former 
both  in  religious  vertue,  and  all  masculine  mag- 
nanimity." This  surely  looks  but  too  much  as 
though  the  dramatist  and  poet  thought  more  of 
the  chronicler  and  compiler  than  of  the  truer 
Heywood  whose  name  is  embalmed  in  the  af- 
fection and  admiration  of  his  readers  even  to 
this  day;  as  though  the  author  of  "A  Challenge 
for  Beauty,"  "The  Fair  Maid  of  the  West,"  and 
"A  Woman  Killed  with  Kindness,"  must  have 
hoped  and  expected  to  be  remembered  rather  as 
the  author  of  "Troja  Britannica,"  'TwaiKfiovy" 
"The  Hierarchic  of  the  Blessed  Angels,"  and  even 
this  "Life  of  Merlin,  simamed  Ambrosius,  His 
Prophesies,  and  Predictions  Interpreted;  and 
their  truth  made  good  by  our  English  Annalls": 
undoubtedly,  we  may  believe,  "a  Subject  never 


THOMAS   HEYWOOD  213 

published  in  this  kind  before,  and  deser\es"  (sic) 
"to  be  knowne  and  observed  by  all  men."  Here 
follows  the  motto:  "Quotquc  aderant  Vatcs,  re- 
bar  adesse  Deos."  The  biographer  and  chronog- 
rapher  would  apparently  have  been  less  flattered 
than  surprised  to  hear  that  he  would  be  remem- 
bered rather  as  the  creator  of  Frankford,  Mount- 
ferrers,  and  Geraldine,  than  as  the  chronicler  of 
King  Brute,  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  King  James. 
The  singular  series  of  plays  which  covers 
much  the  same  ground  as  Caxton's  immortal  and 
delightful  chronicle  of  the  "Histories"  of  Troy 
may  of  course  have  been  partially  inspired  by 
that  most  enchanting  "recuyell":  but  Hejrwood, 
as  will  appear  on  collation  or  confrontation  of  the 
dramatist  with  the  historian,  must  have  found 
elsewhere  the  suggestion  of  some  of  his  most 
effective  episodes.  The  excellent  simplicity  and 
vivacity  of  style,  the  archaic  abruptness  of  action 
and  presentation,  are  equally  noticeable  through- 
out all  the  twenty-five  acts  which  lead  us  from 
the  opening  of  the  Golden  to  the  close  of  the  Iron 
Age ;  but  there  is  a  no  less  perceptible  advance  or 
increase  of  dramatic  and  poetic  invention  in  the 
ten  acts  devoted  to  the  tale  of  Troy  and  its  sequel. 
Not  that  there  is  anyw^here  any  want  of  good 
simple  spirited  work,  homely  and  lively  and  ap- 
propriate to  the  ambitious  humility  of  the  de- 


214         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

sign ;  a  design  which  aims  at  making  popular  and 
familiar  to  the  citizens  of  Elizabethan  London 
the  whole  cycle  of  heroic  legend  from  the  reign  of 
Saturn  to  the  death  of  Helen.  Jupiter,  the  young 
hero  of  the  first  two  plays  and  ages,  is  a  really 
brilliant  and  amusing  mixture  of  Amadis,  Sigurd, 
and  Don  Juan:  the  pretty  scene  in  which  his 
infant  life  is  spared  and  saved  must  be  familiar, 
and  pleasantly  familiar,  to  all  worthy  lovers  of 
Charles  Lamb.  The  verse  underlined  and  immor- 
talized by  his  admiration — "For  heaven's  sake, 
when  you  kill  him,  hurt  him  not" — should  suffice 
to  preserve  and  to  embalm  the  name  of  the  writer. 
I  can  scarcely  think  that  a  later  scene,  apparently 
imitated  from  the  most  impudent  idyl  of  Theocri- 
tus, can  have  been  likely  to  elevate  the  moral 
tone  of  the  young  gentleman  who  must  have 
taken  the  part  of  Callisto ;  but  the  honest  laureate 
of  the  city,  stem  and  straightforward  as  he  was  in 
the  enforcement  of  domestic  duties  and  con- 
temporary morals,  could  be  now  and  then  as 
audacious  in  his  plebeian  fashion  as  even  Fletcher 
himself  in  his  more  patrician  style  of  realism. 
There  is  spirit  of  a  quiet  and  steady  kind  in  the 
scenes  of  war  and  adventure  that  follow:  Hey- 
wood,  like  Caxton  before  him,  makes  of  Saturn 
and  the  Titans  very  human  and  simple  figures, 
whose  doings  and  sufferings  are  presented  with 


THOMAS   HEYWOOD  215 

child-like  straightforwardness  in  smooth  and  flu- 
ent verse  and  in  dialogue  which  wants  neither 
strength  nor  ease  nor  propriety.  The  subse- 
quent episode  of  Danae  is  treated  with  such  frank 
and  charming  fusion  of  realism  and  romance  as 
could  only  have  been  achieved  in  the  age  of 
Shakespeare.  To  modem  readers  it  may  seem 
unfortunate  for  He^^wood  that  a  poet  who  never 
(to  the  deep  and  universal  regret  of  all  com- 
petent readers)  followed  up  the  dramatic  promise 
of  his  youth,  as  displayed  in  the  nobly  vivid  and 
pathetic  little  tragedy  of  "Sir  Peter  Harpdon's 
End,"  should  in  our  day  have  handled  the  story 
of  Danae  and  the  story  of  Bellerophon  so  effec- 
tively as  to  make  it  impossible  for  the  elder  poet 
either  to  escape  or  to  sustain  comparison  with 
the  author  of  "The  Earthly  Paradise";  but  the 
most  appreciative  admirers  of  Morris  will  not 
be  the  slowest  or  the  least  ready  to  do  justice  to 
the  admirable  qualities  displayed  in  Heyw^ood's 
dramatic  treatment  of  these  legends.  The  nat- 
urally sweet  and  spontaneous  delicacy  of  the 
later  poet  must  not  be  looked  for  in  the  homely 
and  audacious  realism  of  Hey^vood;  in  whose 
work  the  style  of  the  Knight's  Tale  and  the  style 
of  the  Miller's  Tale  run  side  by  side  and  hand 
in  hand. 

From  the  Golden  Age  to  the  Iron  Age  the 


2i6         THE    AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

growth  and  ascent  of  Hey  wood's  dramatic  power 
may  fairly  be  said  to  correspond  in  a  reversed 
order  with  the  degeneracy  and  decline  of  human 
heroism  and  happiness  in  the  legendary  gradation 
or  degradation  of  the  classical  four  ages.  "The 
Golden  Age"  is  a  delightful  example  of  dramatic 
poetry  in  its  simplest  and  most  primary  stage; 
in  "The  Silver  Age"  the  process  of  evolution  is 
already  visible  at  work.  Bellerophon  and  Aurea 
cannot  certainly  be  compared  with  the  Joseph 
and  Phraxanor  of  Charles  Wells :  but  the  curt  and 
abrupt  scene  in  which  they  are  hastily  thrust  on 
the  stage  and  as  hastily  swept  off  it  is  excellently 
composed  and  written.  The  highest  possible 
tribute  to  the  simple  and  splendid  genius  of 
Plautus  is  paid  by  the  evidence  of  the  fact  that 
all  his  imitators  have  been  obliged  to  follow  so 
closely  on  the  lines  of  his  supernatural,  poetical, 
and  farcical  comedy  of  Amphitryon.  Hey  wood, 
Rotrou,  Moliere,  and  Dryden  have  sat  at  his  feet 
and  copied  from  his  dictation  like  school-boys. 
The  French  pupils,  it  must  be  admitted,  have 
profited  better  and  shown  themselves  apter  and 
happier  disciples  than  the  English.  I  cannot 
think  that  even  Moliere  has  improved  on  the  text 
of  Rotrou  as  much,  or  nearly  as  much,  as  he  has 
placed  himself  under  unacknowledged  obligation 
to  his  elder  countryman :  but  in  Dr>'den's  version 


THOMAS   HEYWOOD  217 

there  is  a  taint  of  greasy  vulgarity,  a  reek  of 
obtrusive  ruffianism,  from  which  Heywood's  ver- 
sion is  as  clean  as  Shakespeare's  could  have  been, 
had  he  bestowed  on  the  "Amphitruo"  the  honor 
he  conferred  on  the  "Menaechmi."  The  power 
of  condensation  into  a  few  compact  scenes  of 
material  sufficient  for  five  full  acts  is  a  remark- 
able and  admirable  gift  of  Heywood's. 

After  the  really  dramatic  episode  in  which  he 
had  the  advantage  of  guidance  by  the  laughing 
light  of  a  greater  comic  genius  than  his  own, 
Heywood  contentedly  resumes  the  simple  task 
of  arranging  for  the  stage  a  mythological  chron- 
icle of  miscellaneous  adventure.  The  jealousy  of 
Juno  is  naturally  the  mainspring  of  the  action 
and  the  motive  which  affords  some  show  of  con- 
nection or  coherence  to  the  three  remaining  acts 
of  "The  Silver  Age":  the  rape  of  Proserpine,  the 
mourning  and  wandering  and  wrath  of  Ceres,  are 
treated  with  so  sweet  and  beautiful  a  simplicity  of 
touch  that  Milton  may  not  impossibly  have  em- 
balmed and  transfigured  some  reminiscence  of 
these  scenes  in  a  passage  of  such  heavenly  beauty 
as  custom  cannot  stale.  Another  episode,  and 
one  not  even  indirectly  connected  with  the  labors 
of  Hercules,  is  the  story  of  Semele,  handled  with 
the  same  simple  and  straightforward  skill  of 
dramatic  exposition,  the  same  purity  and  fluency 

IS 


2i8         THE    AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

of  blameless  and  spontaneous  verse,  that  dis- 
tinguish all  parts  alike  of  this  dramatic  chronicle. 
The  second  of  the  five  plays  composing  it  closes 
with  the  rescue  of  Proserpine  by  Hercules,  and 
the  judgment  of  Jupiter  on  "the  Arraignment  of 
the  Moon." 

In  "The  Brazen  Age"  there  is  somewhat  more 
of  dramatic  unity  or  coherence  than  in  the  two 
bright  easy-going  desultory  plays  which  preceded 
it:  it  closes  at  least  with  a  more  effective  ca- 
tastrophe than  either  of  them  in  the  death  of 
Hercules.  However  far  inferior  to  the  haughty 
and  daring  protest  or  appeal  in  which  Sophocles, 
speaking  through  the  lips  of  the  virtuous  Hyllus, 
impeaches  and  denounces  the  iniquity  of  heaven 
with  a  steadfast  and  earnest  vehemence  unsur- 
passed in  its  outspoken  rebellion  by  any  modem 
questioner  or  blasphemer  of  divine  providence, 
the  simple  and  humble  sincerity  of  the  English 
playwright  has  given  a  not  unimpressive  or  in- 
harmonious conclusion  to  the  same  superhuman 
tragedy.  In  the  previous  presentation  of  the 
story  of  Meleager,  Heywood  has  improved  upon 
the  brilliant  and  passionate  rhetoric  of  Ovid  by 
the  introduction  of  an  original  and  happy  touch 
of  dramatic  effect:  his  Alth^a,  after  firing  the 
brand  with  which  her  son's  life  is  destined  to  bum 
out,  relents  and  plucks  it  back  for  a  minute  from 


THOMAS   HEYWOOD  219 

the  flame,  giving  the  victim  a  momentary  respite 

from  torture,  a  fugitive  recrudescence  of  strength 

and  spirit,  before  she  rekindles  it.   The  pathos  of 

his  farewell  has  not  been  overpraised  by  Lamb: 

who  might  have  added  a  word  in  recognition  of 

the  very  spirited  and  effective  suicide  of  Althaea, 

not  unworthily  heralded  or  announced  in  such 

verses  as  these: 

This  was  my  son, 
Bom  with  sick  throes,  nursed  from  my  tender  breast, 
Brought  up  with  feminine  care,  cherished  with  love; 
His  youth  my  pride;  his  honor  all  my  wishes; 
So  dear,  that  little  less  he  was  than  life. 

The  subsequent  adventures  of  Hercules  and 
the  Argonauts  are  presented  with  the  same  quiet 
straightforwardness  of  treatment:  it  is  curious 
that  the  tragic  end  of  Jason  and  Medea  should 
find  no  place  in  the  multifarious  chronicle  which 
is  nominally  and  mainly  devoted  to  the  record  of 
the  life  and  death  of  Hercules,  but  into  which  the 
serio-comic  episode  of  Mars  and  Venus  and 
Vulcan  is  thrust  as  crudely  and  abruptly  as  it  is 
humorously  and  dramatically  presented.  The 
rivalry  of  Omphale  and  Deianeira  for  their 
hero's  erratic  affection  affords  a  lively  and 
happy  mainspring — not  suggested  by  Caxton — 
for  the  tragic  action  and  passion  of  the  closing 
scenes. 


220         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

At  the  opening  of  "The  Iron  Age,"  nineteen 
years  later  in  date  of  publication,  we  find  our- 
selves at  last  arrived  in  a  province  of  dramatic 
poetry  where  something  of  consecutive  and  co- 
herent action  is  apparently  the  aim  if  not  always 
the  achievement  of  the  writer.  These  ten  acts  do 
really  constitute  something  like  a  play,  and  a  play 
of  serious,  various,  progressive,  and  sustained 
interest,  beginning  with  the  elopement  and  clos- 
ing with  the  suicide  of  Helen.  There  is  little  in 
it  to  suggest  the  influence  of  either  Homer  or 
Shakespeare:  whose  "Troilus  and  Cressida"  had 
appeared  in  print,  for  the  helplessly  bewildered 
admiration  of  an  eternally  mystified  world,  just 
twenty- three  years  before.  The  only  figure 
equally  prominent  in  either  play  is  that  of 
Thersites:  but  Heywood,  happily  and  wisely,  has 
made  no  manner  of  attempt  to  rival  or  to  re- 
produce the  frightful  figure  of  the  intelligent 
Yahoo  in  which  the  sane  and  benignant  genius  of 
Shakespeare  has  for  once  anticipated  and  eclipsed 
the  mad  and  malignant  genius  of  Swift.  It 
should  be  needless  to  add  that  his  Ulysses  has  as 
little  of  Shakespeare's  as  of  Homer's:  and  that 
the  brutalization  or  degradation  of  the  god-like 
figures  of  Ajax  and  Achilles  is  only  less  offensive 
in  the  lesser  than  in  the  greater  poet's  work. 
In  the  friendly  duel  between  Hector  and  Ajax 


THOMAS   HEY  WOOD  221 

the  very  text  of  Shakespeare  is  followed  with 
exceptional  and  almost  servile  fidelity:  but  the 
subsequent  exchange  of  gifts  is,  of  course,  intro- 
duced in  imitation  of  earlier  and  classic  models. 
The  contest  of  Ajax  and  Ulysses  is  neatly  and 
spiritedly  cast  into  dramatic  form:  Ovid,  of 
course,  remains  unequalled,  as  he  who  runs  may 
read  in  Dry  den's  grand  translation,  but  Hey  wood 
has  done  better — to  my  mind  at  least — than 
Shirley  was  to  do  in  the  next  generation ;  though 
it  is  to  be  noted  that  Shirley  has  retained  more  of 
the  magnificent  original  than  did  his  immediate 
precursor:  but  the  death  of  Ajax  is  too  pitiful  a 
burlesque  to  pass  muster  even  as  a  blasphemous 
travestie  of  the  sacred  text  of  Sophocles.  In  the 
fifth  play  of  this  pentalogy  Heywood  has  to  cope 
with  no  such  matchless  models  or  precursors; 
and  it  is  perhaps  the  brightest  and  most  interest- 
ing of  the  five.  Sinon  is  a  spirited  and  rather 
amusing  understudy  of  Thersites:  his  seduction 
of  Cressida  is  a  grotesquely  diverting  variation 
on  the  earlier  legend  relating  to  the  final  fall  of 
the  typical  traitress ;  and  though  time  and  space 
are  wanting  for  the  development  or  indeed  the 
presentation  of  any  more  tragic  or  heroic  char- 
acter, the  rapid  action  of  the  last  two  acts  is 
workmanlike  in  its  simple  fashion:  the  compli- 
cated or  rather  accumulated  chronicle  of  crime 


222         THE   AGE   OF    SHAKESPEARE 

and  retribution  may  claim  at  least  the  credit  due 
to  straightforward  lucidity  of  composition  and 
sprightly  humility  of  style. 

In  "Love's  Mistress;  or,  The  Queen's  Masque," 
the  stage  chronicler  or  historian  of  the  Four  Ages 
appears  as  something  more  of  a  dramatic  poet: 
his  work  has  more  of  form  and  maturity,  with  no 
whit  less  of  spontaneity  and  spirit,  simplicity  and 
vivacity.  The  framework  or  setting  of  these  five 
acts,  in  which  Midas  and  Apuleius  play  the  lead- 
ing parts,  is  sustained  with  lively  and  homely 
humor  from  induction  to  epilogue:  the  story  of 
Psyche  is  thrown  into  dramatic  form  with  happier 
skill  and  more  graceful  simplicity  by  Heywood 
than  afterward  by  Moliere  and  Comeille ;  though 
there  is  here  nothing  comparable  with  the  famous 
and  exquisite  love  scene  in  which  the  genius  of 
Comeille  renewed  its  youth  and  replumed  its 
wing  with  feathers  borrowed  from  the  heedless 
and  hapless  Theophile's.  The  fortunes  of  Psyche 
in  English  poetry  have  been  as  curious  and  vari- 
ous as  her  adventures  on  earth  and  elsewhere. 
Besides  and  since  this  pretty  little  play  of  Hey- 
wood's,  she  has  inspired  a  long  narrative  poem  by 
Marmion,  one  of  the  most  brilliant  and  inde- 
pendent of  the  younger  comic  writers  who  sat  at 
the  feet  or  gathered  round  the  shrine  of  Ben 
Jonson;  a  lyrical  drama  by  William  the  Dutch- 


THOMAS   HEY  WOOD  223 

man's  poet  laureate,  than  which  nothing  more 
portentous  in  platitude  ever  crawled  into  print, 
and  of  which  the  fearfully  and  wonderfully  wood- 
en verse  evoked  from  Shad  well's  great  predeces- 
sor in  the  office  of  court  rhymester  an  immor- 
talizing reference  to  "Prince  Nicander's  vein"; 
a  magnificent  ode  by  Keats,  and  a  very  pretty 
example  of  metrical  romance  by  Morris. 

' '  Inexplicable  and  eccentric  as  were  the  moods 
and  fashions  of  dramatic  poetry  in  an  age  when 
Shakespeare  could  think  fit  to  produce  anything 
so  singular  in  its  composition  and  so  mysterious 
in  its  motive  as  'Troilus  and  Cressida,'  the  most 
eccentric  and  inexplicable  play  of  its  time,  or 
perhaps  of  any  time,  is  probably  'The  Rape  of 
Lucrece.'"  This  may  naturally  be  the  verdict 
of  a  hasty  reader  at  a  first  glance  over  the  party- 
colored  scenes  of  a  really  noble  tragedy,  crossed 
and  checkered  with  the  broadest  and  quaintest 
interludes  of  lyric  and  erotic  farce.  But,  setting 
these  eccentricities  duly  or  indulgently  aside,  we 
must  recognize  a  fine  specimen  of  chivalrous  and 
romantic  rather  than  classical  or  mythological 
drama;  one,  if  not  belonging  properly  or  essen- 
tially to  the  third  rather  than  to  the  second  of  the 
four  sections  into  which  Heyw-ood's  existing  plays 
may  be  exhaustively  divided,  which  stands  on 
the  verge  between  them  with  something  of  the 


224         THE   AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

quaintest  and  most  graceful  attributes  of  either. 
The  fine  instinct  and  the  simple  skill  with  which 
the  poet  has  tempered  the  villany  of  his  villains 
without  toning  down  their  atrocities  by  the  alloy 
of  any  incongruous  quality  must  be  acknowledged 
as  worthily  characteristic  of  a  writer  who  at  his 
ethical  best  might  be  defined  as  something  of  a 
plebeian  Sidney.  There  are  touches  of  criminal 
heroism  and  redeeming  humanity  even  in  the 
parts  of  Sextus  and  Tullia:  the  fearless  despera- 
tion of  the  doomed  ravisher,  the  conjugal  devo- 
tion of  the  hunted  parricide,  give  to  the  last  de- 
fiant agony  of  the  abominable  mother  and  son  a 
momentary  tone  of  almost  chivalrous  dignity. 
The  blank  verse  is  excellent,  though  still  con- 
siderably alloyed  with  rhyme:  a  fusion  or  alter- 
nation of  metrical  effects  in  which  the  young 
Hey  wood  was  no  less  skilful  and  successful,  in- 
artistic as  the  skill  and  illegitimate  as  the  success 
may  seem  to  modem  criticism,  than  the  young 
Shakespeare. 

The  eleven  plays  already  considered  make 
up  the  two  divisions  of  Heywood's  work  which 
with  all  their  great  and  real  merit  have  least 
in  them  of  those  peculiar  qualities  most  distinc- 
tive and  representative  of  his  genius :  those  quali- 
ties of  which  when  we  think  of  him  we  think  first, 
and  which  on  summing  up  his  character  as  a  poet 


THOMAS    HEYWOOD  225 

we  most  naturally  associate  with  his  name.  As 
a  historical  or  mythological  playwright,  working 
on  material  derived  from  classic  legends  or  from 
English  annals,  he  shows  signs  now  and  then,  as 
occasion  offers,  of  the  sweet-tempered  manliness, 
the  noble  kindliness,  which  won  the  heart  of 
Lamb:  something  too  there  is  in  these  plays  of 
his  pathos,  and  something  of  his  humor:  but  if 
this  were  all  we  had  of  him  we  should  know  com- 
paratively little  of  what  we  now  most  prize  in 
him.  Of  this  we  find  most  in  the  plays  dealing 
with  English  life  in  his  own  day:  but  there  is 
more  of  it  in  his  romantic  tragicomedies  than  in 
his  chronicle  histories  or  his  legendary  complica- 
tions and  variations  on  the  antique.  The  famous 
and  delicious  burlesque  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher 
cannot  often  be  forgotten  but  need  not  always  be 
remembered  in  reading  "The  Four  Prentices  of 
London."  Externally  the  most  extravagant  and 
grotesque  of  dramatic  poems,  this  eccentric  tragi- 
comedy of  chivalrous  adventure  is  full  of  poetic  as 
well  as  fantastic  interest.  There  is  really  some- 
thing of  discrimination  in  the  roughly  and  readily 
sketched  characters  of  the  four  crusading  broth- 
ers :  the  youngest  especially  is  a  life-like  model  of 
restless  and  reckless  gallantry  as  it  appears  when 
incarnate  in  a  hot-headed  English  boy;  unlike 
even  in  its  likeness  to  the  same  type  as  embodied 


226         THE    AGE   OF    SHAKESPEARE 

in  a  French  youngster  such  as  the  immortal 
d'Artagnan.  Justice  has  been  done  by  Lamb,  and 
consequently  as  well  as  subsequently  by  later 
criticism,  to  the  occasionally  fine  poetry  which 
breaks  out  by  flashes  in  this  quixotic  romance  of 
the  City,  with  its  serio-comic  ideal  of  crusading 
counter-jumpers:  but  it  has  never  to  my  knowl- 
edge been  observed  that  in  the  scene  ' '  where  they 
toss  their  pikes  so,"  which  aroused  the  special 
enthusiasm  of  the  worthy  fellow-citizen  whose 
own  prentice  was  to  bear  the  knightly  ensign  of 
the  Burning  Pestle,  Heywood,  the  future  object 
of  Dryden's  ignorant  and  pointless  insult,  an- 
ticipated with  absolute  exactitude  the  style  of 
Dryden's  own  tragic  blusterers  when  most  busily 
bandying  tennis-balls  of  ranting  rhyme  in  mutual 
challenge  and  reciprocal  retort  of  amoebaean 
epigram.^ 

It  is  a  pity  that  Heywood's  civic  or  professional 

^  Compare  this  with  any  similar  sample  of  heroic  dialogue 
in  "  Tyrannic  Love  "  or  "  The  Conquest  of  Granada  ": 

"Rapier  and  pike,  is  that  thy  honored  play? 

Look  down,  ye  gods,  this  combat  to  survey." 
"Rapier  and  pike  this  combat  shall  decide: 

Gods,  angels,  men,  shall  see  me  tame  thy  pride." 
"I'll  teach  thee:  thou  shalt  like  my  zany  be. 

And  feign  to  do  my  cunning  after  me." 

This  will  remind  the  reader  not  so  much  of  the  "  Re- 
hearsal "  as  of  Butler's  infinitely  superior  parody  in  the 
heroic  dialogue  of  Cat  and  Puss. 


THOMAS   HEYWOOD  227 

devotion  to  the  service  of  the  metropolis  should 
ever  have  been  worse  employed  than  in  the  trans- 
figuration of  the  idealized  prentice :  it  is  a  greater 
pity  that  we  cannot  exchange  all  Heywood's  ex- 
tant masques  for  any  one  of  the  two  hundred  plays 
or  so  now  missing  in  which,  as  he  tells  us,  he  "had 
either  an  entire  hand,  or  at  least  a  main  finger." 
The  literary  department  of  a  Lord  Mayor's  show 
can  hardly  be  considered  as  belonging  to  litera- 
ture, even  when  a  poet's  time  and  trouble  were 
misemployed  in  compiling  the  descriptive  prose 
and  the  declamatory  verse  contributed  to  the 
ceremony.  Not  indeed  that  it  was  a  poet  who 
devoted  so  much  toil  and  good-will  to  celebration 
or  elucidation  of  the  laborious  projects  and  ob- 
jects both  by  water  and  land  which  then  dis- 
tinguished or  deformed  the  sundry  triumphs, 
pageants,  and  shows  on  which  Messrs.  Christmas 
Brothers  and  their  most  ingenious  parent  were 
employed  in  a  more  honorable  capacity  than  the 
subordinate  function  of  versifier  or  showman — 
an  office  combining  the  parts  and  the  duties  of  the 
immortal  Mrs.  Jarley  and  her  laureate  Mr.  Shum. 
Lexicographers  might  pick  out  of  the  text  some 
rare  if  not  unique  Latinisms  or  barbarisms  such 
as  "prestigion"  and  "strage";  but  except  for 
the  purpose  of  such  "harmless  drudges"  and 
perhaps  of  an  occasional  hunter  after  samples  of 


2  28         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

the  bathetic  which  might  have  rewarded  the 
attention  of  Arbuthnot  or  Pope,  the  text  of  these 
pageants  must  be  as  barren  and  even  to  them  it 
would  presumably  be  as  tedious  a  subject  of  study 
as  the  lucubrations  of  the  very  dullest  English 
moralist  or  American  humorist;  a  course  of  read- 
ing digestible  only  by  such  constitutions  as  could 
survive  and  assimilate  a  diet  of  Martin  Tupper 
or  Mark  Twain.  And  yet  even  in  the  very 
homeliest  doggrel  of  Heywood's  or  Shakespeare's 
time  there  is  something  comparatively  not  con- 
temptible; the  English,  when  not  alloyed  by 
fantastic  or  pedantic  experiment,  has  a  simple 
historic  purity  and  dignity  of  its  own;  the  dul- 
ness  is  not  so  dreary  as  the  dulness  of  mediaeval 
prosers,  the  commonplace  is  not  so  vulgar  as  the 
commonplace  of  more  modem  scribes. 

"The  Trial  of  Chivalry"  is  a  less  extravagant 
example  of  homely  romantic  drama  than  "The 
Four  Prentices  of  London."  We  owe  to  Mr. 
Bullen  the  rediscovery  of  this  play,  and  to  Mr. 
Fleay  the  determination  and  verification  of  its 
authorship.  In  style  and  in  spirit  it  is  perfect 
Heywood :  simple  and  noble  in  emotion  and  con- 
ception, primitive  and  straightforward  in  con- 
struction and  expression;  inartistic  but  not  in- 
effectual; humble  and  facile,  but  not  futile  or 
prosaic.     It  is  a  rather  more  rational  and  natural 


THOMAS    HEYWOOD  229 

piece  of  work  than  might  have  been  expected 
from  itvS  author  when  equipped  after  the  heroic 
fashion  of  Mallory  or  Froissart:  its  date  is  more 
or  less  indistinctly  indicated  by  occasional  rhymes 
and  peculiar  conventionalities  of  diction:  and  if 
Heywood  in  the  panoply  of  a  knight-errant  may 
now  and  then  suggest  to  his  reader  the  figure  of 
Sancho  Panza  in  his  master's  armor,  his  pedes- 
trian romance  is  so  genuine,  his  modest  ambition 
so  high-spirited  and  high-minded,  that  it  would 
be  juster  and  more  critical  to  compare  him  with 
Don  Quixote  masquerading  in  the  accoutrements 
of  his  esquire.  Dick  Bowyer,  whose  life  and 
death  are  mendaciously  announced  on  the  catch- 
penny title-page,  and  who  (like  Tiny  Tim  in 
"A  Christmas  Carol  ")  "does  not  die,"  is  a  rather 
rough,  thin,  and  faint  sketch  of  the  bluff  British 
soldier  of  fortune  who  appears  and  reappears  to 
better  advantage  in  other  plays  of  Heywood 
and  his  fellows.  That  this  must  be  classed 
among  the  earlier  if  not  the  earliest  of  his  works 
we  may  infer  from  the  primitive  simplicity  of  a 
stage  direction  which  recalls  another  in  a  play 
printed  five  years  before.  In  the  second  scene  of 
the  third  act  of  "The  Trial  of  Chivalry"  w^e  read, 
as  follows:  "Enter  Forester,  missing  the  other 
taken  away,  speaks  anything,  and  exit."  In  the 
penultimate  scene  of  the  second  part  of  "King 


230         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

Edward  IV."  we  find  this  even  quainter  direction, 
which  has  been  quoted  before  now  as  an  instance 
of  the  stage  conditions  or  habits  of  the  time: 
"Jockie  is  led  to  whipping  over  the  stage,  speak- 
ing some  words,  but  of  no  importance." 

A  further  and  deeper  debt  of  thanks  is  due  to 
Mr.  Bullen  for  the  recovery  of  "The  Captives ;  or, 
The  Lost  Recovered,"  after  the  lapse  of  nearly 
three  centuries.  The  singularly  prophetic  sub- 
title of  this  classic  and  romantic  tragicomedy  has 
been  justified  at  so  late  a  date  by  the  beneficence 
of  chance,  in  favorable  conjunction  with  the 
happy  devotion  and  fortunate  research  of  a 
thorough  and  a  thoroughly  able  student,  as  to 
awaken  in  all  fellow-lovers  of  dramatic  poetry  a 
sense  of  hopeful  wonder  with  regard  to  the  almost 
illimitable  possibilities  of  yet  further  and  yet 
greater  treasure  to  be  discovered  and  recovered 
from  the  keeping  of  "dust  and  damned  oblivion." 
Meantime  we  may  be  heartily  thankful  for  the 
recovery  of  an  excellent  piece  of  work,  written 
throughout  with  the  easy  mastery  of  serious  or 
humorous  verse,  the  graceful  pliancy  of  style  and 
the  skilful  simplicity  of  composition,  which  might 
have  been  expected  from  a  mature  work  of  Hey- 
wood's,  though  the  execution  of  it  would  now  and 
then  have  suggested  an  earlier  date.  The  clown, 
it  may  be  noticed,  is  the  same  who  always  reap- 


THOMAS    HEYWOOD  231 

pears  to  do  the  necessary  comicalities  in  Hey- 
wood's  plays;  if  hardly  "a  fellow  of  infinite  jest," 
yet  an  amusing  one  in  his  homely  way;  though 
one  would  have  thought  that  on  the  homeliest 
London  stage  of  1624  the  taste  for  antiphonal 
improvisation  of  doggrel  must  have  passed  into 
the  limbo  of  obsolete  simplicities.  The  main  plot 
is  very  well  managed,  as  with  Plautus  once  more 
for  a  model  might  properly  have  been  expected ; 
the  rather  ferociously  farcical  underplot  must 
surely  have  been  borrowed  from  some  fabliau. 
The  story  has  been  done  into  doggrel  by  George 
Colman  the  younger:  but  that  cleanly  and  pure 
minded  censor  of  the  press  would  hardly  have 
licensed  for  the  stage  a  play  which  would  have 
required,  if  the  stage-carpenter  had  been  then  in 
existence,  the  production  of  a  scene  which  would 
have  anticipated  what  Gautier  so  plausibly 
plumed  himself  upon  as  a  novelty  in  stage  effect 
— imagined  for  the  closing  scene  of  his  imaginary 
tragedy  of  "Heliogabalus." 

There  are  touches  of  pathetic  interest  and 
romantic  invention  in  '  'A  Maidenhead  Well  Lost ' ' : 
two  or  three  of  the  leading  characters  are  prettily 
sketched  if  not  carefully  finished,  and  the  style  is 
a  graceful  compromise  between  unambitious  po- 
etry and  mildly  spirited  prose:  but  it  is  hardly 
to  be  classed  among  Hey  wood's  best  work  of  the 


232        THE   AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

kind:  it  has  no  scenes  of  such  fervid  and  noble 
interest,  such  vivid  and  keen  emotion  as  dis- 
tinguish "A  Challenge  for  Beauty":  and  for  all 
its  simple  grace  of  writing  and  ingenuous  in- 
genuity of  plot  it  may  not  improbably  be  best 
remembered  by  the  average  modem  reader  as 
remarkable  for  the  most  amusing  and  astonish- 
ing example  on  record  of  anything  but  "inex- 
plicable" dumb  show — to  be  paralleled  only  and 
hardly  by  a  similar  interlude  of  no  less  elaborate 
arrangement  and  significant  eccentricity  in  the 
sole  dramatic  venture  of  Henri  de  Latouche — 
"La  Reine  d'Espagne." 

Little  favor  has  been  shown  by  modem  critics 
and  even  by  modem  editors  to  "The  Royal  King 
and  the  Loyal  Subject":  and  the  author  himself, 
in  committing  it  to  the  tardy  test  of  publication, 
offered  a  quaint  and  frank  apology  for  its  old- 
fashioned  if  not  obsolete  style  of  composition  and 
versification.  Yet  I  cannot  but  think  that  Hallam 
was  right  and  Dyce  was  wrong  in  his  estimate  of 
a  play  which  does  not  challenge  and  need  not 
shrink  from  comparison  with  Fletcher's  more  elab- 
orate, rhetorical,  elegant,  and  pretentious  tragi- 
comedy of  "The  Loyal  Subject";  that  the  some- 
what eccentric  devotion  of  Heywood's  hero  is  not 
more  slavish  or  foolish  than  the  obsequious  sul)- 
mission  of  Fletcher's;  and  that  even  if  we  may 


THOMAS   HEYWOOD  233 

not  be  allowed  to  make  allowance  for  the  primi- 
tive straightforwardness  or  take  delight  in  the 
masculine  simplicity  of  the  elder  poet,  we  must 
claim  leave  to  object  that  there  is  more  essential 
servility  of  spirit,  more  preposterous  prostration 
of  manhood,  in  the  Russian  ideal  of  Fletcher  than 
in  the  English  ideal  of  Hey  wood.  The  humor  is 
as  simple  as  is  the  appeal  to  emotion  or  sym- 
pathetic interest  in  this  primitive  tragicomedy; 
but  the  comic  satire  on  worldly  venality  and 
versatility  is  as  genuine  and  honest  as  the  se- 
rious exposition  of  character  is  straightforward 
and  sincere. 

The  best  of  Heywood's  romantic  plays  is  the 
most  graceful  and  beautiful,  in  detached  scenes 
and  passages,  of  all  his  extant  works.  The  com- 
bination of  the  two  plots — they  can  hardly  be 
described  as  plot  and  underplot — is  so  dexter- 
ously happy  that  it  would  do  the  highest  credit 
to  a  more  famous  and  ambitious  artist :  the  rival 
heroes  are  so  really  noble  and  attractive  that  we 
are  agreeably  compelled  to  condone  whatever 
seems  extravagant  or  preposterous  in  their  re- 
lations or  their  conduct:  there  is  a  breath  of 
quixotism  in  the  air  which  justifies  and  ennobles 
it.  The  heroines  are  sketched  with  natural  grace 
and  spirit:  it  is  the  more  to  be  regretted  that 

their  bearing  in  the  last  act  should  have  less  of 
16 


234         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

delicacy  or  modesty  than  of  ingenious  audacity 
in  contrivances  for  striking  and  daring  stage 
effect;  a  fault  as  grave  in  aesthetics  as  in  ethics, 
and  one  rather  to  have  been  expected  from 
Fletcher  than  from  Hey  wood.  But  the  general 
grace  and  the  occasional  pathos  of  the  writing 
may  fairly  be  set  against  the  gravest  fault  that 
can  justly  be  found  with  so  characteristic  and  so 
charming  a  work  of  Hey  wood's  genius  at  its 
happiest  and  brightest  as  "A  Challenge  for 
Beauty." 

The  line  of  demarcation  between  realism  and 
romance  is  sometimes  as  difficult  to  determine  in 
the  work  of  Heywood  as  in  the  character  of  his 
time :  the  genius  of  England,  the  spirit  of  English- 
men, in  the  age  of  Shakespeare,  had  so  much  of 
the  practical  in  its  romance  and  so  much  of  the 
romantic  in  its  practice  that  the  beautiful  dra- 
matic poem  in  which  the  English  heroes  Man- 
hurst  and  Montferrers  play  their  parts  so  nobly 
beside  their  noble  Spanish  compeers  in  chivalry 
ought  perhaps  to  have  been  classed  rather  among 
the  studies  of  contemporary  life  on  which  their 
author's  fame  must  principally  and  finally  de- 
pend than  among  those  which  have  been  defined 
as  belonging  to  the  romantic  division  of  his  work. 
There  is  much  the  same  fusion  of  interests,  as 
there  is  much  the  same  mixture  of  styles,  in  the 


THOMAS   HEYWOOD  235 

conduct  of  a  play  for  which  we  have  once  more 
to  tender  our  thanks  to  the  living  benefactor  at 
once  of  Heywood  and  of  his  admirers.  That 
Mr.  Bullen  was  well  advised  in  putting  forward 
a  claim  for  Heywood  as  the  recognizable  author 
of  a  play  which  a  few  years  ago  had  never  seen 
the  light  is  as  evident  as  that  his  estimate  of  the 
fine  English  quality  which  induced  this  recogni- 
tion was  justified  by  all  rules  of  moral  evidence. 
There  can  be  less  than  little  doubt  that  "Dick 
of  Devonshire"  is  one  of  the  two  hundred  and 
twenty  in  which  Heywood  had  "a  main  finger" 
— though  not,  I  should  say,  by  any  means  "an 
entire  hand."  The  metre  is  not  always  up  to 
his  homely  but  decent  mark:  though  in  many  of 
the  scenes  it  is  worthy  of  his  best  plays  for 
smoothness,  fluency,  and  happy  simplicity  of 
effect.  Dick  Pike  is  a  better  study  of  the  bluff 
and  tough  English  hero  than  Dick  Bowyer  in 
"The  Trial  of  Chivalry  " :  and  the  same  chivalrous 
sympathy  with  the  chivalrous  spirit  and  tradition 
of  a  foreign  and  a  hostile  nation  which  delights 
us  in  "A  Challenge  for  Beauty"  pervades  and 
vivifies  this  long-lost  and  long-forgotten  play. 
The  partial  sacrifice  of  ethical  propriety  or  moral 
consistency  to  the  actual  or  conventional  exi- 
gences of  the  stage  is  rather  more  startling  than 
usual:  a  fratricidal  ravisher  and  slanderer  could 


236         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

hardly  have  expected  even  from  theatrical  tol- 
erance the  monstrous  lenity  of  pardon  and  dis- 
missal with  a  prospect  of  being  happy  though 
married.  The  hand  of  Hey  wood  is  more  rec- 
ognizable in  the  presentation  of  a  clown  who 
may  fairly  be  called  identical  with  all  his  others, 
and  in  the  noble  answer  of  the  criminal's  brother 
to  their  father's  very  natural  question:  "Why 
dost  thou  take  his  part  so?" 

Because  no  drop  of  honor  falls  from  him 
But  I  bleed  with  it. 

This  high-souled  simplicity  of  instinct  is  as 
traceable  in  the  earlier  as  in  the  later  of  Hey- 
wood's  extant  works:  he  is  English  of  the  Eng- 
lish in  his  quiet,  frank,  spontaneous  expression, 
when  suppression  is  no  longer  either  possible  or 
proper,  of  all  noble  and  gentle  and  natural  emo- 
tion. His  passion  and  his  pathos,  his  loyalty  and 
his  chivalry,  are  always  so  unobtrusive  that  their 
modesty  may  sometimes  run  the  risk  of  eclipse 
before  the  glory  of  more  splendid  poets  and  more 
conspicuous  patriots :  but  they  are  true  and  trust- 
worthy as  Shakespeare's  or  Milton's  or  Words- 
worth's or  Tennyson's  or  Browning's. 

It  was  many  a  year  before  Dick  Pike  had 
earned  the  honor  of  commemoration  by  his  hand 
or  by  any  other  poet's  that  Heywood  had  won  his 


THOMAS   HEYVVOOD  237 

spurs  as  the  champion  presenter — if  I  may  be 
allowed  to  revive  the  word — of  his  humbler  and 
homelier  countrymen  under  the  light  of  a  no  less 
noble  than  simple  realism.  "The  Fair  Maid  of 
the  Exchange"  is  a  notable  example  of  what  I 
believe  is  professionally  or  theatrically  called  a 
one-part  piece.  Adapting  Dr.  Johnson's  curiously 
unjust  and  inept  remark  on  Shakespeare's  "King 
Henry  VIII." — the  play  in  which,  according  to 
the  principles  or  tenets  of  the  new  criticism  which 
walks  or  staggers  by  the  new  light  of  a  new 
scholarship,  "the  new  Shakspere"  may  or  must 
have  been  assisted  by  Flitcher  (why  not  also  by 
Meddletun,  Messenger,  and  a  few  other  novi  hom- 
ines?), we  may  say,  and  it  may  be  said  this  time 
with  some  show  of  reason,  that  the  genius  of  the 
author  limps  in  and  limps  out  with  the  Cripple. 
Most  of  the  other  characters  and  various  episod- 
ical incidents  of  the  incomposite  story  are  alike, 
if  I  may  revive  a  good  and  expressive  phrase  of 
the  period,  hastily  and  unskilfully  slubbered  up: 
Bowdler  is  a  poor  second-hand  and  third-rate  ex- 
ample of  the  Jonsonian  gull;  and  the  transfer 
of  Moll's  regard  from  him  to  his  friend  is  both 
childishly  conceived  and  childishly  contrived.  On 
the  whole,  a  second-rate  play,  with  one  or  two 
first-rate  scenes  and  passages  to  which  Lamb  has 
done  perhaps  no  more  than  justice  by  the  charac- 


238         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

teristic  and  eloquent  cordiality  of  his  commenda- 
tions. Its  date  may  be  probably  determined  as 
early  among  the  earliest  of  its  author's  by  the 
occurrence  in  mid-dialogue  of  a  sestet  in  the 
popular  metre  of  "Venus  and  Adonis,"  with 
archaic  inequality  in  the  lengths  of  the  second 
and  fourth  rhyming  words:  a  notable  note  of 
metrical  or  immetrical  antiquity  in  style.  The 
self-willed  if  high-minded  Phyllis  Flower  has 
something  in  her  of  Heywood's  later  heroines, 
Bess  Bridges  of  Plymouth  and  Luce  the  gold- 
smith's daughter,  but  is  hardly  as  interesting  or 
attractive  as  either. 

Much  less  than  this  can  be  said  for  the  heroines, 
if  heroines  they  can  in  any  sense  be  called,  of 
the  two  plays  by  which  Heywood  is  best  known 
as  a  tragic  and  a  comic  painter  of  contemporary 
life  among  his  countrymen.  It  is  certainly  not 
owing  to  any  exceptional  power  of  painting  or 
happiness  in  handling  feminine  character  that 
the  first  place  among  his  surviving  works  has 
been  generally  and  rationally  assigned  to  "A 
Woman  Killed  with  Kindness."  The  fame  of 
this  famous  realistic  tragedy  is  due  to  the  perfect 
fitness  of  the  main  subject  for  treatment  in  the 
manner  of  which  Heywood  was  in  his  day  and 
remains  to  the  present  day  beyond  all  com- 
parison  the  greatest  and   the  most  admirable 


THOMAS    HEYWOOD  239 

master.  It  is  not  that  the  mterest  is  either  nat- 
urally greater,  or  greater  by  force  and  felicity  of 
genius  in  the  dramatist,  than  that  of  other  and 
far  inferior  plays.  It  is  not  that  the  action  is 
more  artistically  managed :  it  is  not  that  curiosity 
or  sympathy  is  aroused  or  sustained  with  any 
particular  skill .  Such  a  play  as  ' '  Fatal  Curiosity ' ' 
is  as  truthfully  lifelike  and  more  tragically  ex- 
citing: it  is  in  mere  moral  power  and  charm,  with 
just  a  touch  of  truer  and  purer  poetry  pervading 
and  coloring  and  flavoring  and  quickening  the 
whole,  that  the  work  of  a  Heyw^ood  approves 
itself  as  beyond  the  reach  or  the  ambition  of  a 
Lillo.  One  figure  among  many  remains  im- 
pressed on  his  reader's  memory  once  for  all:  the 
play  is  full  of  incident,  perhaps  over-full  of  actors, 
excellently  well  written  and  passably  well  com- 
posed; but  it  lives,  it  survives  and  overtops  its 
fellows,  by  grace  of  the  character  of  its  hero.  The 
underplot,  whether  assthetically  or  historically 
considered,  is  not  more  singular  and  sensational 
than  extravagant  and  unpleasant  to  natural  taste 
as  well  as  to  social  instinct:  the  other  agents  in 
the  main  plot  are  little  more  than  sketches — 
sometimes  deplorably  out  of  drawing:  Anne  is 
never  really  alive  till  on  her  death-bed,  and  her 
paramour  is  never  alive — in  his  temptation,  his 
transgression,  or  his  impenitence — at  all.     The 


240         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

whole  play,  as  far  as  we  remember  or  care  to  re- 
member it,  is  Frankford :  he  suffices  to  make  it  a 
noble  poem  and  a  memorable  play. 

The  hero  of  "The  English  Traveller,"  however 
worthy  to  stand  beside  him  as  a  typical  sample  of 
English  manhood  at  its  noblest  and  gentlest,  can- 
not be  said  to  occupy  so  predominant  a  place  in 
the  conduct  of  the  action  or  the  memory  of  the 
reader.  The  comic  Plautine  underplot — Plautus 
always  brought  good  luck  to  Heywood — is  so 
incomparably  preferable  to  the  ugly  and  un- 
natural though  striking  and  original  underplot  of 
"A  Woman  Killed  with  Kindness"  as  wellnigh  to 
counterbalance  the  comparative  lack  of  interest, 
plausibility,  and  propriety  in  the  main  action. 
The  seduction  of  Mrs.  Frankford  is  so  roughly 
slurred  over  that  it  is  hard  to  see  how,  if  she  could 
not  resist  a  first  whisper  of  temptation,  she  can 
ever  have  been  the  loyal  wife  and  mother  whose 
fall  we  are  expected  to  deplore :  but  the  seduction 
of  Mrs.  Wincott,  or  rather  her  transformation 
from  the  likeness  of  a  loyal  and  high-minded  lady 
to  the  likeness  of  an  impudent  and  hypocritical 
harlot,  is  neither  explained  nor  explicable  in  the 
case  of  a  woman  who  dies  of  a  sudden  shock  of 
shame  and  penitence.  Her  paramour  is  only  not 
quite  so  shapeless  and  shadowy  a  scoundrel  as 
the  betrayer  of  Frankford:  but  Heywood  is  no 


THOMAS    HEYWOOD  241 

great  hand  at  a  villain:  his  nobly  simple  concep- 
tion and  grasp  and  development  of  character  will 
here  be  recognized  only  in  the  quiet  and  perfect 
portraiture  of  the  two  grand  old  gentlemen  and 
the  gallant  unselfish  youth  whom  no  more  subtle 
or  elaborate  draughtsman  could  have  set  before 
us  in  clearer  or  fuller  outline,  with  more  attrac- 
tive and  actual  charm  of  feature  and  expression. 
"The  Fair  Maid  of  the  West"  is  one  of  Hey- 
wood's  most  characteristic  works,  and  one  of  his 
most  delightful  plays.  Inartistic  as  this  sort 
of  dramatic  poem  may  seem  to  the  lovers  of 
theatrical  composition  and  sensational  arrange- 
ment, of  emotional  calculations  and  premeditated 
shocks,  it  has  a  place  of  its  own,  and  a  place  of 
honor,  among  the  incomparably  various  forms  of 
noble  and  serious  drama  which  English  poets  of 
the  Shakespearean  age  conceived,  created,  and 
left  as  models  irhpossible  to  reproduce  or  to  rival 
in  any  generation  of  poets  or  readers,  actors  or 
spectators,  after  the  decadent  forces  of  English 
genius  in  its  own  most  natural  and  representative 
form  of  popular  and  creative  activity  had  finally 
shrivelled  up  and  shuddered  into  everlasting  in- 
anition under  the  withering  blast  of  Puritanism. 
Before  that  blight  had  fallen  upon  the  country  of 
Shakespeare,  the  variety  and  fertility  of  dramatic 
form  and  dramatic  energy  which  distinguished 


242         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

the  typical  imagination  or  invention  of  his  coun- 
trymen can  only  be  appreciated  or  conceived  by 
students  of  what  yet  is  left  us  of  the  treasure  be- 
queathed by  the  fellows  and  the  followers  of 
Shakespeare.  Every  other  man  who  could  speak 
or  write  at  all  was  a  lyric  poet,  a  singer  of  beauti- 
ful songs,  in  the  generation  before  Shakespeare's: 
every  other  such  man  in  Shakespeare's  was  a 
dramatic  poet  above  or  beyond  all  comparison 
with  any  later  claimant  of  the  title  among 
Shakespeare's  countrymen.  One  peculiarly  and 
characteristically  English  type  of  drama  which 
then  flourished  here  and  there  among  more  am- 
bitious if  not  more  interesting  forms  or  varieties, 
and  faded  forever  with  the  close  of  the  age  of 
Shakespeare,  was  the  curious  and  delightful  kind 
of  play  dealing  with  records  or  fictions  of  con- 
temporary adventure.  The  veriest  failures  in 
this  line  have  surely  something  of  national  and 
historical  interest;  telling  us  as  they  do  of  the 
achievements  or  in  any  case  of  the  aspirations 
and  the  ideals,  the  familiar  traditions  and  ambi- 
tions and  admirations,  of  our  simplest  and  noblest 
forefathers.  Even  such  a  play  as  that  in  which 
the  adventures  of  the  Shirleys  were  hurried  and 
huddled  into  inadequate  and  incoherent  presenta- 
tion as  "The  Travels  of  Three  English  Brothers," 
however  justly  it  may  offend  or  dissatisfy  the 


THOxMAS    HEYWOOD  243 

literary  critic,  can  hardly  be  without  attraction 
for  the  lover  of  his  country:  curiosity  may  be 
disappointed  of  its  hope,  yet  patriotism  may  find 
matter  for  its  sympathy.  And  if  so  much  may  be 
said  on  behalf  of  a  poetic  and  dramatic  failure, 
this  and  far  more  than  this  may  be  claimed  on 
behalf  of  such  plays  as  "The  Fair  Maid  of  the 
West"  and  "Fortune  by  Land  and  Sea."  Of 
these  the  first  is  certainly  the  better  play :  I  should 
myself  be  inclined  to  rank  it  among  Heywood's 
very  best.  He  never  wrote  anything  brighter, 
sprightlier,  livelier  or  fuller  of  life  and  energy: 
more  amusing  in  episodical  incident  or  by-play, 
more  interesting  and  attractive  in  the  structure 
or  the  progress  of  the  main  story.  No  modem 
heroine  with  so  strong  a  dash  of  the  Amazon — so 
decided  a  cross  of  the  male  in  her — was  ever  so 
noble,  credible  and  lovable  as  Bess  Bridges:  and 
Plymouth  ought  really  to  do  itself  the  honor  of 
erecting  a  memorial  to  her  poet.  An  amusing 
instance  of  He>^vood's  incomparable  good-nature 
and  sweetness  of  temper  in  dealing  with  the 
creatures  of  his  genius — incomparable  I  call  it, 
because  in  Shakespeare  the  same  beautiful  quality 
is  more  duly  tempered  and  toned  do\vn  to  more 
rational  compliance  with  the  demands  of  reason 
and  probability,  whether  natural  or  dramatic — is 
here  to  be  recognized  in  the  redemption  of  a 


244         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

cowardly  bully,  and  his  conversion  from  a  lying 
ruffian  into  a  loyal  and  worthy  sort  of  fellow. 
The  same  gallant  spirit  of  sympathy  with  all 
noble  homeliness  of  character,  whether  displayed 
in  joyful  search  of  adventure  or  in  manful  en- 
durance of  suffering  and  wrong,  informs  the  less 
excellently  harmonious  and  well-built  play  which 
bears  the  truly  and  happily  English  title  of 
"Fortune  by  Land  and  Sea."  It  has  less  ro- 
mantic interest  than  the  later  adventures  of  the 
valiant  Bess  and  her  Spencer  with  the  amorous 
King  of  Fez  and  his  equally  erratic  consort ;  not 
to  mention  the  no  less  susceptible  Italians 
among  whom  their  lot  is  subsequently  cast:  but 
it  is  a  model  of  natural  and  noble  simplicity,  of 
homely  and  lively  variety.  There  is  perhaps 
more  of  the  roughness  and  crudity  of  style  and 
treatment  which  might  be  expected  from  Rowley 
than  of  the  humaner  and  easier  touch  of  Hey- 
wood  in  the  conduct  of  the  action:  the  curious 
vehemence  and  primitive  brutality  of  social  or 
domestic  tyranny  may  recall  the  use  of  the  same 
dramatic  motives  by  George  Wilkins  in  "The 
Miseries  of  Enforced  Marriage":  but  the  mixt- 
ure or  fusion  of  tender  and  sustained  emotion 
with  the  national  passion  for  enterprise  and  ad- 
venture is  pleasantly  and  peculiarly  character- 
istic of  Hcywood. 


THOMAS   HEYWOOD  245 

In  "The  Wise  Woman  of  Hogsdon"  the  dra- 
matic abiHty  of  Heywood,  as  distinct  from  his 
more  poetic  and  pathetic  faculty,  shows  itself  at 
its  best  and  brightest.  There  are  not  many  much 
better  examples  of  the  sort  of  play  usually  de- 
fined as  a  comedy  of  intrigue,  but  more  properly 
definable  as  a  comedy  of  action.  The  special  risk 
to  which  a  purveyor  of  this  kind  of  ware  must 
naturally  be  exposed  is  the  tempting  danger  of 
sacrificing  propriety  and  consistency  of  character 
to  effective  and  impressive  suggestions  or  de- 
velopments of  situation  or  event ;  the  inclination 
to  think  more  of  what  is  to  happen  than  of  the 
persons  it  must  happen  to — the  characters  to  be 
actively  or  passively  affected  by  the  concurrence 
or  the  evolution  of  circumstances.  Only  to  the 
very  greatest  of  narrative  or  dramatic  artists  in 
creation  and  composition  can  this  perilous  possi- 
bility be  all  but  utterly  unknown.  Poets  of  the 
city  no  less  than  poets  of  the  court,  the  homely 
Heywood  as  well  as  the  fashionable  Fletcher, 
tripped  and  fell  now  and  then  over  this  awkward 
stone  of  stumbling  —  a  very  rock  of  offence  to 
readers  of  a  more  exacting  temper  or  a  more 
fastidious  generation  than  the  respective  au- 
diences of  patrician  and  plebeian  London  in  the 
age  of  Shakespeare.  The  leading  young  man  of 
this  comedy  now  under  notice  is  represented  as 


246  THE  AGE  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

"a  wild-headed  gentleman,"  and  revealed  as  an 
abject  ruffian  of  unredeemed  and  irredeemable 
rascality.  As  much  and  even  more  may  be  said 
of  the  execrable  wretch  who  fills  a  similar  part  in 
an  admirably  written  play  published  thirty-six 
years  earlier  and  verified  for  the  first  time  as 
Heywood's  by  the  keen  research  and  indefatiga- 
ble intuition  of  Mr.  Fleay.  The  parallel  passages 
cited  by  him  from  the  broadly  farcical  underplots 
are  more  than  suggestive,  even  if  they  be  not 
proof  positive,  of  identity  in  authorship:  but  the 
identity  in  atrocity  of  the  two  hideous  figures 
who  play  the  two  leading  parts  must  reluctantly 
be  admitted  as  more  serious  evidence.  The 
abuse  of  innocent  foreign  words  or  syllables  by 
comparison  or  confusion  with  indecent  native 
ones  is  a  simple  and  school-boy-like  sort  of  jest 
for  which  Master  Heywood,  if  impeached  as  even 
more  deserving  of  the  birch  than  any  boy  on  his 
stage,  might  have  pleaded  the  example  of  the 
captain  of  the  school,  and  protested  that  his 
humble  audacities,  if  no  less  indecorous,  were 
funnier  and  less  forced  than  Master  Shake- 
speare's. As  for  the  other  member  of  Webster's 
famous  triad,  I  fear  that  the  most  indulgent 
sentence  passed  on  Master  Dekker,  if  sent  up  for 
punishment  on  the  charge  of  bad  language  and 
impudence,  could  hardly  in  justice  be  less  than 


THOMAS    HEYWOOD  247 

Orbilian  or  Draconic.  But  he  was  apparently  if 
not  assuredly  almost  as  incapable  as  Shakespeare 
of  presenting  the  most  infamous  of  murderers  as 
an  erring  but  pardonable  transgressor,  not  unfit 
to  be  received  back  with  open  arms  by  the  wife  he 
has  attempted,  after  a  series  of  the  most  hideous 
and  dastardly  outrages,  to  despatch  by  poison. 
The  excuse  for  Hey\vood  is  simply  that  in  his 
day  as  in  Chaucer's  the  orthodox  ideal  of  a  mar- 
ried heroine  was  still  none  other  than  Patient 
Grizel:  Shakespeare  alone  had  got  beyond  it. 

The  earlier  of  these  two  plays,  "a  pleasant" 
if  somewhat  sensational  "comedy  entitled  'How 
to  Choose  a  Good  Wife  from  a  Bad,' "  is  written 
for  the  most  part  in  Heywood's  most  graceful  and 
poetical  vein  of  verse,  with  beautiful  simplicity, 
purity,  and  fluency  of  natural  and  musical  style. 
In  none  of  his  plays  is  the  mixture  or  rather  the 
fusion  of  realism  with  romance  more  simply 
happy  and  harmonious:  the  rescue  of  the  injured 
wife  by  a  faithful  lover  from  the  tomb  in  which, 
like  Juliet,  she  has  been  laid  while  under  the 
soporific  influence  of  a  supposed  poison  could 
hardly  have  been  better  or  more  beautifully 
treated  by  any  but  the  very  greatest  among 
Heywood's  fellow-poets.  There  is  no  merit  of 
this  kind  in  the  later  play :  but  from  the  dramatic 
if  not  even  from  the  ethical  point  of  view  it  is,  on 


248        THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

the  whole,  a  riper  and  more  rational  sort  of  work. 
The  culmination  of  accumulating  evidence  by 
which  the  rascal  hero  is  ultimately  overwhelmed 
and  put  to  shame,  driven  from  lie  to  lie  and 
reduced  from  retractation  to  retractation  as  wit- 
ness after  witness  starts  up  against  him  from 
every  successive  comer  of  the  witch's  dwelling,  is 
as  masterly  in  management  of  stage  effect  as  any 
contrivance  of  the  kind  in  any  later  and  more 
famous  comedy:  nor  can  I  remember  a  more 
spirited  and  vivid  opening  to  any  play  than  the 
quarrelling  scene  among  the  gamblers  with  which 
this  one  breaks  out  at  once  into  life-like  action, 
full  of  present  interest  and  promise  of  more  to 
come.  The  second  scene,  in  which  the  fair 
sempstress  appears  at  work  in  her  father's  shop, 
recalls  and  indeed  repeats  the  introduction  of  the 
heroine  in  an  earlier  play:  but  here  again  the 
author's  touch  is  firmer  and  his  simplicity  more 
masculine  than  before.  This  coincidence  is  at 
least  as  significant  as  that  between  the  two 
samples  of  flogging-block  doggrel  collated  for 
comparison  by  Mr.  Fleay:  it  is  indeed  a  sugges- 
tive though  superfluous  confirmation  of  Hey- 
wood's  strangely  questioned  but  surely  unques- 
tionable claim  to  the  authorship  of  "The  Fair 
Maid  of  the  Exchange."  A  curious  allusion  to  a 
more  famous  play  of  the  author's  is  the  charac- 


THOMAS   HEYWOOD  249 

teristic  remark  of  the  young  ruffian  Chartley: 
"Well,  I  see  you  choleric  hasty  men  are  the 
kindest  when  all  is  done.  Here's  such  wetting 
of  handkerchers !  he  weeps  to  think  of  his  wife, 
she  weeps  to  see  her  father  cry!  Peace,  fool,  we 
shall  else  have  thee  claim  kindred  of  the  woman 
killed  with  kindness."  And  in  the  fourth  and 
last  scene  of  the  fourth  act  the  same  scoundrel 
is  permitted  to  talk  Shakespeare:  "I'll  go,  al- 
though the  devil  and  mischance  look  big." 

Poetical  justice  may  cry  out  against  the  dra- 
matic lenity  which  could  tolerate  or  prescribe  for 
the  sake  of  a  comfortable  close  to  this  comedy 
the  triumphant  escape  of  a  villanous  old  im- 
postor and  baby-farmer  from  the  condign  punish- 
ment due  to  her  misdeeds;  but  the  severest  of 
criminal  judges  if  not  of  professional  witch-find- 
ers might  be  satisfied  with  the  justice  or  injustice 
done  upon  ' '  the  late  Lancashire  Witches ' '  in  the 
bright  and  vigorous  tragicomedy  which,  as  we 
learn  from  Mr.  Fleay,  so  unwarrantably  and  un- 
charitably (despite  a  disclaimer  in  the  epilogue) 
anticipated  the  verdict  of  their  judges  against  the 
defenceless  victims  of  terrified  prepossession  and 
murderous  perjury.  But  at  this  time  of  day  the 
mere  poetical  reader  or  dramatic  student  need 
not  concern  himself,  while  reading  a  brilliant  and 
delightful  play,  with  the  soundness  or  unsound- 


250         THE    Age    of    SHAKESPEARE 

ness  of  its  moral  and  historical  foundations. 
There  may  have  been  a  boy  so  really  and  so  ut- 
terly possessed  by  the  devil  who  seems  now  and 
then  to  enter  into  young  creatures  of  human 
form  and  be-monster  them  as  to  amuse  himself 
by  denouncing  helpless  and  harmless  women  to 
the  most  horrible  of  deaths  on  the  most  horrible 
of  charges:  that  hideous  passing  fact  does  not 
affect  or  impair  the  charming  and  lasting  truth 
of  Heywood's  unsurpassable  study,  the  very 
model  of  a  gallant  and  life-like  English  lad,  all 
compact  of  fearlessness  and  fun,  audacity  and 
loyalty,  so  perfectly  realized  and  rendered  in  this 
quaint  and  fascinating  play.  The  admixture  of 
what  a  modem  boy  would  call  cheek  and  chaff 
with  the  equally  steadfast  and  venturesome  res- 
olution of  the  indomitable  young  scapegrace  is 
so  natural  as  to  make  the  supernatural  escapades 
in  which  it  involves  him  quite  plausible  for  the 
time  to  a  reader  of  the  right  sort:  even  as  (to 
compare  this  small  masterpiece  with  a  great  one) 
such  a  reader,  while  studying  the  marvellous  text 
of  Meinhold,  is  no  more  sceptical  than  is  their 
chronicler  as  to  the  sorceries  of  Sidonia  von  Bork. 
And  however  condemnable  or  blameworthy  the 
authors  of  "The  Witches  of  Lancashire"  may 
appear  to  a  modern  reader  or  a  modern  magis- 
trate or  jurist  for  their  dramatic  assumption  or 


THOMAS   HEYWOOD  251 

presumption  in  begging  the  question  against  the 
unconvicted  defendants  whom  they  describe  in 
the  prologue  as  "those  witches  the  fat  jailor 
brought  to  town,"  they  can  hardly  have  been 
either  wishful  or  able  to  influence  the  course  of 
justice  toward  criminals  of  whose  evident  guilt 
they  were  evidently  convinced.  Shadwell's  later 
play  of  the  same  name,  though  not  wanting  in 
such  rough  realistic  humor  and  coarse-grained 
homespun  interest  as  we  expect  in  the  comic 
produce  of  his  hard  and  heavy  hand,  makes 
happily  no  attempt  to  emulate  the  really  noble 
touches  of  poetry  and  pathos  with  which  Hey- 
wood  has  thrown  out  into  relief  the  more  serious 
aspect  of  the  supposed  crime  of  witchcraft  in  its 
influence  or  refraction  upon  the  honor  and  hap- 
piness of  innocent  persons.  Og  was  naturally 
more  in  his  place  and  more  in  his  element  as  the 
second  "fat  jailor"  of  Lancashire  witches  than 
as  the  second  English  dramatic  poet  of  Psyche: 
he  has  come  closer  than  his  precursors,  closer 
indeed  than  could  have  been  thought  possible, 
to  actual  presentation  of  the  most  bestial  and 
abominable  details  of  demonolatry  recorded  by 
the  chroniclers  of  witchcraft:  and  in  such  scenes 
as  are  rather  transcribed  than  adapted  from  such 
narratives  he  has  imitated  his  professed  master 
and  model,  Ben  Jonson,  by  appending  to  his 


252         THE    AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

text,  with  the  most  minute  and  meticulous  care, 
all  requisite  or  more  than  requisite  references  to 
his  original  authorities.  The  allied  poets  who 
had  preceded  him  were  content  to  handle  the 
matter  more  easily  and  lightly,  with  a  quaint 
apology  for  having  nothing  of  more  interest  to 
offer  than  "an  argument  so  thin,  persons  so 
low,"  that  they  could  only  hope  their  play  might 
"pass  pardoned,  though  not  praised."  Brome's 
original  vein  of  broad  humor  and  farcical  fancy 
is  recognizable  enough  in  the  presentation  of  the 
bewitched  household  where  the  children  rule  their 
parents  and  are  ruled  by  their  servants;  a  situ- 
ation which  may  have  suggested  the  still  more 
amusing  development  of  the  same  fantastic  mo- 
tive in  his  admirable  comedy  of  "The  Antipodes." 
There  is  a  noticeable  reference  to  "Macbeth"  in 
the  objurgations  lavished  by  the  daughter  upon 
the  mother  under  the  influence  of  a  revolution- 
ary spell:  "Is  this  a  fit  habit  for  a  handsome 
young  gentlewoman's  mother?  as  I  hope  to  be 
a  lady,  you  look  like  one  o'  the  Scottish  way- 
ward sisters."  The  still  more  broadly  comic 
interlude  of  the  bewitched  rustic  bridegroom 
and  his  loudly  reclamatory  bride  is  no  less  hu- 
morously sustained  and  carried  through.  Alto- 
gether, for  an  avowedly  hasty  and  occasional 
piece  of  work,  this  tragicomedy  is  very  cred- 


THOMAS    HEYWOOD  253 

itably  characteristic  of  both  its  associated  au- 
thors. 

How  small  a  fraction  of  Heywood's  actual 
work  is  comprised  in  these  twenty-six  plays  we 
cannot  even  conjecturally  compute ;  we  only  know 
that  they  amount  to  less  than  an  eighth  part  of 
the  plays  written  wholly  or  mainly  by  his  inde- 
fatigable hand,  and  that  they  are  altogether  out- 
weighed in  volume,  though  decidedly  not  in  value, 
by  the  existing  mass  of  his  undramatic  work.  We 
know  also,  if  we  have  eyes  to  see,  that  the  very 
hastiest  and  slightest  of  them  does  credit  to  the 
author,  and  that  the  best  of  them  are  to  be  count- 
ed among  the  genuine  and  imperishable  treasures 
of  English  literature.  Such  amazing  fecundity 
and  such  astonishing  industry  would  be  memor- 
able even  in  a  far  inferior  writer;  but,  though  I 
certainly  cannot  pretend  to  anything  like  an  ex- 
haustive or  even  an  adequate  acquaintance  with 
all  or  any  of  his  folios,  I  can  at  least  affirm  that 
they  contain  enough  delightfully  readable  matter 
to  establish  a  more  than  creditable  reputation. 
His  prose,  if  never  to  be  called  masterly,  may 
generally  be  called  good  and  pure:  its  occasional 
pedantries  and  pretentions  are  rather  signs  of  the 
century  than  faults  of  the  author ;  and  he  can  tell 
a  story,  especially  a  short  stor>^  as  well  as  if  not 
better  than  many  a  better-known  writer.     I  fear, 


254         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

however,  that  it  is  not  the  poetical  quaUty  of 
his  undramatic  verse  which  can  ever  be  said  to 
make  it  worth  reading:  it  is,  as  far  as  I  know,  of 
the  very  homehest  homespun  ever  turned  out 
by  the  very  humblest  of  workmen.  His  poetry, 
it  would  be  pretty  safe  to  wager,  must  be  looked 
for  exclusively  in  his  plays :  but  there,  if  not  re- 
markable for  depth  or  height  of  imagination  or  of 
passion,  it  will  be  found  memorable  for  unsur- 
passed excellence  of  unpretentious  elevation  in 
treatment  of  character.  The  unity  (or,  to  bor- 
row from  Coleridge  a  barbaric  word,  the  triunity) 
of  noble  and  gentle  and  simple  in  the  finest  qual- 
ity of  the  English  character  at  its  best — of  the 
English  character  as  revealed  in  our  Sidneys  and 
Nelsons  and  Collingwoods  and  Franklins — is  al- 
most as  apparent  in  the  best  scenes  of  his  best 
plays  as  in  the  lives  of  our  chosen  and  best- 
beloved  heroes:  and  this,  I  venture  to  believe, 
would  have  been  rightly  regarded  by  Thomas 
Heywood  as  a  more  desirable  and  valuable  suc- 
cess than  the  achievement  of  a  noisier  triumph 
or  the  attainment  of  a  more  conspicuous  place 
among  the  poets  of  his  country. 


GEORGE    CHAPJMAN 

George  Chapman,  translator  of  Homer,  dram- 
atist, and  gnomic  poet,  was  bom  in  1559,  and 
died  in  1634.  At  fifteen,  according  to  Anthony 
Wood,  "  he,  being  well  grounded  in  school  learn- 
ing, was  sent  to  the  university"  of  Oxford;  at 
thirty -five  he  published  his  first  poem:  "The 
Shadow  of  Night. ' '  Between  these  dates,  though 
no  fact  has  been  unearthed  concerning  his  career, 
it  is  not  improbable  that  he  may  have  travelled 
in  Germany.  At  thirty-nine  he  was  reckoned 
"among  the  best  of  our  tragic  writers  for  the 
stage";  but  his  only  play  published  at  that  age 
was  a  crude  and  formless  attempt  at  romantic 
comedy,  which  had  been  acted  three  years  before 
it  passed  from  the  stage  to  the  press ;  and  his  first 
tragedy  now  extant  in  print,  without  name  of 
author,  did  not  solicit  the  suffrage  of  a  reader 
till  the  poet  was  forty-eight.  At  thirty-nine  he 
had  also  published  the  first  instalment  of  his 
celebrated  translation  of  the  "Iliad,"  in  a  form 
afterward    much    remodelled;    at   sixty-five   he 


256         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

crowned  the  lofty  structure  of  his  labor  by  the 
issue  of  an  English  version  of  the  "Hymns"  and 
other  minor  Homeric  poems.  The  former  he 
dedicated  to  Robert  Devereux,  Earl  of  Essex, 
the  hapless  favorite  of  Elizabeth;  the  latter  to 
Robert  Carr,  Earl  of  Somerset,  the  infamous 
minion  of  James.  Six  years  earlier  he  had  in- 
scribed to  Bacon,  then  Lord  Chancellor,  a  transla- 
tion of  Hesiod's  "Works  and  Days."  His  only 
other  versions  of  classic  poems  are  from  the  fifth 
satire  of  Juvenal  and  the  "Hero  and  Leander" 
which  goes  under  the  name  of  Musseus,  the  latter 
dedicated  to  Inigo  Jones.  His  revised  and  com- 
pleted version  of  the  "Iliad"  had  been  inscribed 
in  a  noble  and  memorable  poem  of  dedication  to 
Henry  Prince  of  Wales,  after  whose  death  he  and 
his  "Odyssey"  fell  under  the  patronage  of  Carr. 
Of  the  manner  of  his  death  at  seventy-five  we 
know  nothing  more  than  may  be  gathered  from 
the  note  appended  to  a  manuscript  fragment, 
which  intimates  that  the  remainder  of  the  poem, 
a  lame  and  awkward  piece  of  satire  on  his  old 
friend  Jonson,  had  been  "lost  in  his  sickness." 
Chapman,  his  first  biographer  is  careful  to  let 
us  know,  "was  a  person  of  most  reverend  aspect, 
religious  and  temperate,  qualities  rarely  meeting 
in  a  poet";  he  had  also  certain  other  merits  at 
least  as  necessary  to  the  exercise  of  that  profes- 


GEORGE    CHAPMAN  257 

sion.  He  had  a  singular  force  and  solidity  of 
thought,  an  admirable  ardor  of  ambitious  devo- 
tion to  the  service  of  poetry,  a  deep  and  burning 
sense  at  once  of  the  duty  implied  and  of  the 
dignity  inherent  in  his  office;  a  vigor,  opulence, 
and  loftiness  of  phrase,  remarkable  even  in  that 
age  of  spiritual  strength,  wealth,  and  exaltation 
of  thought  and  style ;  a  robust  eloquence,  touched 
not  unfrequently  with  flashes  of  fancy,  and  kin- 
dled at  times  into  heat  of  imagination.  The 
main  fault  of  his  style  is  one  more  commonly 
found  in  the  prose  than  in  the  verse  of  his  time — 
a  quaint  and  florid  obscurity,  rigid  with  elaborate 
rhetoric  and  tortuous  with  labyrinthine  illustra- 
tion; not  dark  only  to  the  rapid  reader  through 
closeness  and  subtlety  of  thought,  like  Donne, 
whose  miscalled  obscurity  is  so  often  "all  glori- 
ous within,"  but  thick  and  slab  as  a  watch's  gruel 
with  forced  and  barbarous  eccentricities  of  artic- 
ulation. As  his  language  in  the  higher  forms  of 
comedy  is  always  pure  and  clear,  and  sometimes 
exquisite  in  the  simplicity  of  its  sincere  and  nat- 
ural grace,  the  stiffness  and  density  of  his  more 
ambitious  style  may  perhaps  be  attributed  to 
some  pernicious  theory  or  conceit  of  the  dignity 
proper  to  a  moral  and  philosophic  poet.  Never- 
theless, many  of  the  gnomic  passages  in  his 
tragedies   and  allegoric   poems   are   of  singular 


2s8         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

weight  and  beauty;  the  best  of  these,  indeed, 
would  not  discredit  the  fame  of  the  very  great- 
est poets  for  subhmity  of  equal  thought  and 
expression:  witness  the  lines  chosen  by  Shelley 
as  the  motto  for  a  poem,  and  fit  to  have  been 
chosen  as  the  motto  for  his  life. 

The  romantic  and  sometimes  barbaric  grandeur 
of  Chapman's  Homer  remains  attested  by  the 
praise  of  Keats,  of  Coleridge,  and  of  Lamb ;  it  is 
written  at  a  pitch  of  strenuous  and  laborious  exal- 
tation, which  never  flags  or  breaks  down,  but 
never  flies  with  the  ease  and  smoothness  of  an 
eagle  native  to  Homeric  air.  From  his  occasional 
poems  an  expert  and  careful  hand  might  easily 
gather  a  noble  anthology  of  excerpts,  chiefly 
gnomic  or  meditative,  allegoric  or  descriptive. 
The  most  notable  examples  of  his  tragic  work 
are  comprised  in  the  series  of  plays  taken,  and 
adapted  sometimes  with  singular  license,  from 
the  records  of  such  part  of  French  history  as  lies 
between  the  reign  of  Francis  I.  and  the  reign  of 
Henry  IV.,  ranging  in  date  of  subject  from  the 
trial  and  death  of  Admiral  Chabot  to  the  treason 
and  execution  of  Marshal  Biron.  The  two  plays 
bearing  as  epigraph  the  name  of  that  famous 
soldier  and  conspirator  are  a  storehouse  of  lofty 
thought  and  splendid  verse,  with  scarcely  a  flash 
or  sparkle  of  dramatic  action.     The  one  play  of 


GEORGE    CHAPMAN  259 

Chapman's  whose  popularity  on  the  stage  sur- 
vived the  Restoration  is  "Bussy  d'Ambois" 
(d'Amboise) — a  tragedy  not  lacking  in  violence 
of  action  or  emotion,  and  abounding  even  more 
in  sublime  or  beautiful  interludes  than  in  crabbed 
and  bombastic  passages.  His  rarest  jewels  of 
thought  and  verse  detachable  from  the  context 
lie  embedded  in  the  tragedy  of  "Caesar  and 
Pompey,"  whence  the  finest  of  them  were  first 
extracted  by  the  unerring  and  unequalled  critical 
genius  of  Charles  Lamb.  In  most  of  his  tragedies 
the  lofty  and  laboring  spirit  of  Chapman  may  be 
said  rather  to  shine  fitfully  through  parts  than 
steadily  to  pervade  the  whole;  they  show  nobly 
altogether  as  they  stand,  but  even  better  by  help 
of  excerpts  and  selections.  But  the  excellence 
of  his  best  comedies  can  only  be  appreciated  by 
a  student  who  reads  them  fairly  and  fearlessly 
through,  and,  having  made  some  small  deduc- 
tions on  the  score  of  occasional  pedantry  and 
occasional  crudity,  finds  in  "All  Fools,"  "Mon- 
sieur d'Olive,"  "The  Gentleman  Usher,"  and 
"The  Widow's  Tears"  a  wealth  and  vigor  of 
humorous  invention,  a  tender  and  earnest  grace 
of  romantic  poetry,  which  may  atone  alike  for 
these  passing  blemishes  and  for  the  lack  of 
such  clear-cut  perfection  of  character  and  such 
dramatic    progression    of    interest   as   we   find 


26o         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

only  in  the  yet  higher  poets  of  our  heroic 
age. 

The  severest  critic  of  his  shortcomings  or 
his  errors,  if  not  incompetent  to  appreciate  his 
achievements  and  his  merits,  must  recognize  in 
Chapman  an  original  poet,  one  who  held  of  no 
man  and  acknowledged  no  master,  but  through- 
out the  whole  generation  of  our  greatest  men, 
from  the  birth  of  Marlowe  wellnigh  to  the  death 
of  Jonson,  held  on  his  own  hard  and  haughty 
way  of  austere  and  sublime  ambition,  not  with- 
out an  occasional  pause  for  kindly  and  graceful 
salutation  of  such  younger  and  still  nobler  com- 
peers as  Jonson  and  Fletcher.  With  Shakespeare 
we  should  never  have  guessed  that  he  had  come 
at  all  in  contact,  had  not  the  intelligence  of  Mr. 
Minto  divined  or  rather  discerned  him  to  be 
the  rival  poet  referred  to  in  Shakespeare's  son- 
nets with  a  grave  note  of  passionate  satire, 
hitherto  as  enigmatic  as  almost  all  questions  con- 
nected with  those  divine  and  dangerous  poems. 
This  conjecture  the  critic  has  fortified  by  such 
apt  collocation  and  confrontation  of  passages 
that  we  may  now  reasonably  accept  it  as  an  as- 
certained and  memorable  fact. 

The  objections  which  a  just  and  adequate 
judgment  may  bring  against  Chapman's  master- 
work,  his  translation  of  Homer,  may  be  summed 


GEORGE   CHAPMAN  261 

up  in  three  epithets:  it  is  romantic,  laborious, 
Elizabethan.  The  qualities  implied  by  these 
epithets  are  the  reverse  of  those  which  should 
distinguish  a  translator  of  Homer;  but  setting 
this  apart,  and  considering  the  poems  as  in  the 
main  original  works,  the  superstructure  of  a 
romantic  poet  on  the  submerged  foundations  of 
Greek  verse,  no  praise  can  be  too  warm  or  high 
for  the  power,  the  freshness,  the  indefatigable 
strength  and  inextinguishable  fire  which  animate 
this  exalted  work,  and  secure  for  all  time  that 
shall  take  cognizance  of  English  poetry  an  hon- 
ored place  in  its  highest  annals  for  the  memory 
of  Chapman. 


CYRIL  TOURNEUR 

"They,  shut  up  under  their  roofs,  the  prison- 
ers of  darkness,  and  fettered  with  the  bonds  of 
a  long  night,  lay  exiled,  fugitives  from  the  eternal 
providence.  For  while  they  supposed  to  lie  hid 
in  their  secret  sins,  they  were  scattered  under  a 
dark  veil  of  forgetfulness,  being  horribly  aston- 
ished, and  troubled  with  sights.  .  .  .  Sad  visions 
appeared  unto  them  with  heavy  countenances. 
No  power  of  the  fire  might  give  them  light ;  nei- 
ther could  the  bright  flames  of  the  stars  endure  to 
lighten  that  horrible  night.  Only  there  appeared 
unto  them  a  fire  kindled  of  itself,  very  dreadful : 
for  being  much  terrified,  they  thought  the  things 
which  they  saw  to  be  worse  than  the  sight  they 
saw  not.  .  .  .  The  whole  world  shined  with  clear 
light,  and  none  were  hindered  in  their  labor: 
over  them  only  was  spread  an  heavy  night,  an 
image  of  that  darkness  which  should  afterward 
receive  them :  but  yet  were  they  unto  themselves 
more  grievous  than  the  darkness."  In  this  wild 
world  of  fantastic  retribution  and  prophetic  ter- 


CYRIL   TOURNEUR  263 

ror  the  genius  of  a  great  English  poet — if  great- 
ness may  be  attributed  to  a  genius  which  holds 
absolute  command  in  a  strictly  limited  province 
of  reflection  and  emotion — was  bom  and  lived 
and  moved  and  had  its  being.  The  double  main- 
spring of  its  energy  is  not  difficult  to  define: 
its  component  parts  are  simply  adoration  of 
good  and  abhorrence  of  evil :  all  other  sources  of 
emotion  were  subordinate  to  these:  love,  hate, 
resentment,  resignation,  self-devotion,  are  but 
transitory  agents  on  this  lurid  and  stormy  stage, 
which  pass  away  and  leave  only  the  sombre  fire 
of  meditative  indignation  still  burning  among  the 
ruins  of  shattered  hopes  and  lives.  More  splendid 
success  in  pure  dramatic  dialogue  has  not  been 
achieved  by  Shakespeare  or  by  Webster  than  by 
Cyril  Toumeur  in  his  moments  of  happiest  in- 
vention or  purest  inspiration:  but  the  intensity 
of  his  moral  passion  has  broken  the  outline  and 
marred  the  symmetry  of  his  general  design.  And 
yet  he  was  at  all  points  a  poet :  there  is  an  accent 
of  indomitable  self-reliance,  a  note  of  persist- 
ence and  resistance  more  deep  than  any  note  of 
triumph,  in  the  very  cry  of  his  passionate  and  im- 
placable dejection,  which  marks  him  as  different 
in  kind  from  the  race  of  the  great  prosaic  pessi- 
mists whose  scorn  and  hatred  of  mankind  found 
expression  in  the  contemptuous  and  rancorous 


264        THE   AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

despondency  of  Swift  or  of  Carlyle.  The  ob- 
session of  evil,  the  sensible  prevalence  of  wicked- 
ness and  falsehood,  self-interest  and  stupidity, 
pressed  heavily  on  his  fierce  and  indignant  imag- 
ination; yet  not  so  heavily  that  mankind  came 
to  seem  to  him  the  "damned  race,"  the  hopeless 
horde  of  millions  ' '  mostly  fools ' '  too  foolish  or  too 
foul  to  be  worth  redemption,  which  excited  the 
laughing  contempt  of  Frederic  the  Great  and  the 
raging  contempt  of  his  biographer.  On  this  point 
the  editor  to  whom  all  lovers  of  high  poetry  were 
in  some  measure  indebted  for  the  first  collection 
and  reissue  of  his  works  has  done  much  less  than 
justice  to  the  poet  on  whose  text  he  can  scarcely 
be  said  to  have  expended  an  adequate  or  even 
a  tolerable  amount  of  pains.  A  reader  of  his  in- 
troduction who  had  never  studied  the  text  of  his 
author  might  be  forgiven  if  he  should  carry  away 
the  impression  that  Tourneur,  as  a  serious  or 
tragic  poet,  was  little  more  than  a  better  sort  of 
Byron ;  a  quack  less  impudent  but  not  less  trans- 
parent than  the  less  inspired  and  more  inflated 
ventriloquist  of  "Childc  Harold's  Pilgrimage": 
whereas  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the 
earnest  and  fiery  intensity  of  Tourneur's  moral 
rhetoric  is  no  less  unmistakable  than  the  blatant 
and  flatulent  ineptitude  of  Byron's. 

It  seems  to  me  that  Tourneur  might  say  with 


CYRIL  TOURNEUR  265 

the  greatest  of  the  popes,  "I  have  loved  justice, 
and  hated  iniquity:  therefore  I  die  in  exile"; 
therefore,  in  other  words,  I  am  cast  aside  and  left 
behind  by  readers  who  are  too  lazy,  too  soft  and 
slow  of  spirit,  too  sleepily  sensual  and  self-suffi- 
cient, to  endure  the  fiery  and  purgatorial  atmos- 
phere of  my  work.  But  there  are  breaths  from 
heaven  as  surely  as  there  are  blasts  from  hell  in 
the  tumultuous  and  electric  air  of  it.  The  cyni- 
cism and  egotism  which  the  editor  already  men- 
tioned has  the  confidence  to  attribute  to  him  are 
rather  the  outer  garments  than  the  inner  qualities 
of  his  genius:  the  few  and  simple  lines  in  which 
his  purer  and  nobler  characters  are  rapidly  but 
not  roughly  drawn  suffice  to  give  them  all  due 
relief  and  all  requisite  attraction.  The  virtuous 
victims  of  the  murderous  conspirator  whose 
crimes  and  punishment  are  the  groundwork  of 
"The  Atheist's  Tragedy"  have  life  and  spirit 
enough  to  make  them  heartily  interesting:  and 
the  mixed  character  of  Sebastian,  the  high-heart- 
ed and  gallant  young  libertine  whose  fearless 
frankness  of  generosity  brushes  aside  and  breaks 
away  the  best-laid  schemes  of  his  father,  is  as 
vividly  and  gracefully  drawn  as  any  of  the  same 
kind  on  the  comic  or  the  tragic  stage. 

In  this  earlier  of  the  two  plays  extant  which 

preserve  the  name  of  Cyril  Toumeur  the  magnifi- 
18 


266         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

cent  if  grotesque  extravagance  of  the  design  may 
perhaps  be  partly  accounted  for  by  the  didactic  or 
devotional  aim  of  the  designer.  A  more  appalling 
scarecrow  or  scarebabe,  as  the  contemporaries  of 
his  creator  would  have  phrased  it,  was  certainly 
never  begotten  by  orthodoxy  on  horror  than  the 
figure  of  the  portentous  and  prodigious  criminal 
who  here  represents  the  practical  results  of  in- 
dulgence in  free  thought.  It  is  a  fine  proof  of 
the  author's  naturally  dramatic  genius  that  this 
terrific  successor  of  Vanini  and  precursor  of 
Diderot  should  be  other  than  a  mere  man  of 
straw.  Huge  as  is  the  wilful  and  deliberate  ex- 
aggeration of  his  atrocity,  there  are  scenes  and 
passages  in  which  his  daring  and  indomitable 
craft  is  drawn  with  native  skill  as  well  as  force 
of  hand;  in  which  it  is  no  mere  stage  monster, 
but  a  genuine  man,  plausible  and  relentless,  ver- 
satile and  fearless,  who  comes  before  us  now 
clothed  in  all  the  cajoleries  of  cunning,  now 
exultant  in  all  the  nakedness  of  defiance.  But 
indeed,  although  the  construction  of  the  verse 
and  the  composition  of  the  play  may  both  equally 
seem  to  bear  witness  of  crude  and  impatient  in- 
experience, there  is  no  lack  of  life  in  any  of  the 
tragic  or  comic  figures  which  play  their  part 
through  these  tempestuous  five  acts.  Even  so 
small  a  figure  as  the  profligate  Puritan  parasite 


CYRIL  TOURNEUR  267 

of  the  atheist  who  hires  his  hypocrisy  to  plead 
against  itself  is  bright  with  touches  of  real  rough 
humor.  There  is  not  much  of  this  quality  in 
Toumeur's  work,  and  what  there  is  of  it  is  as 
bitter  and  as  grim  in  feature  and  in  flavor  as 
might  be  expected  of  so  fierce  and  passionate  a 
moralist:  but  he  knows  well  how  to  salt  his  in- 
vective with  a  due  sprinkling  of  such  sharply 
seasoned  pleasantry  as  relieves  the  historic  nar- 
rative of  John  Knox;  whose  "merry"*  account, 
for  instance,  of  Cardinal  Beaton's  last  night  in 
this  world  has  the  very  savor  of  Toumeur's  tragic 
irony  and  implacable  disgust  in  every  vivid  and 
relentless  line  of  it. 

The  execution  of  this  poem  is  singularly  good 
and  bad:  there  are  passages  of  such  metrical 
strength  and  sweetness  as  will  hardly  be  found 
in  the  dramatic  verse  of  any  later  English  poet; 
and  there  are  passages  in  which  this  poet's  verse 
sinks  wellnigh  to  the  tragic  level  of  a  Killigrew's, 
a  Shadwell's,  or  a  Byron's.   Such  terminations  as 

or,       to,       with,       m,       and,       my,       your, 
preceding   the   substantive   or   the   verb   which 
opens  the  next  verse,  make  us  feel  as  though  we 
were    reading    " Sardanapalus "    or    "The    Two 
Foscari" — a  sensation  not  easily  to  be  endured. 

*  These  thingis  we  wreat  mearelie. — Works  of  John  Knox, 
vol.  i.,  p.  180. 


268         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

In  a  poet  so  far  superior  as  Toumeur  to  the  author 
of  those  abortions  we  must  seek  for  an  explana- 
tion of  this  perverse  error  in  a  transient  and 
tentative  theory  of  reaHsm  rather  than  in  an 
incurable  infirmity  or  obliquity  of  talent :  for  no 
quality  is  more  remarkable  in  the  execution  of 
his  masterpiece  than  his  mastery  of  those  met- 
rical properties  in  which  the  style  of  this  play 
is  so  generally  deficient.  Whether  in  dialogue 
or  in  monologue,  "The  Revenger's  Tragedy"  is 
so  equally  admirable  for  instinctive  obedience 
to  nature  and  imaginative  magnificence  of  in- 
spiration, so  equally  perfect  in  the  passionate 
harmony  of  its  verse  and  the  inspired  accuracy  of 
its  locution,  that  years  of  study  and  elaboration 
might  have  seemed  necessary  to  bring  about  this 
inexpressible  improvement  in  expression  of  yet 
more  sombre  and  more  fiery  thought  or  feeling. 
There  are  gleams  in  "The  Atheist's  Tragedy"  of 
that  clear  light  in  which  the  whole  Shakespearean 
world  lay  shining,  and  here  and  there  the  bright 
flames  of  the  stars  do  still  endure  to  lighten  the 
gloom  of  it  by  flashes  or  by  fits ;  the  gentle  and 
noble  young  lovers,  whose  patient  loyalty  is  at 
last  rescued  from  the  toils  of  crime  to  be  crowned 
with  happiness  and  honor,  are  painted,  though 
rapidly  and  slightly,  with  equal  firmness  of  hand 
and   tenderness   of   touch;   and   there   is   some 


CYRIL   TOURNEUR  269 

vigorous  and  lively  humor  in  the  lighter  action 
of  the  comic  scenes,  however  coarse  and  crude  in 
handling:  but  there  is  no  such  relief  to  the  terrors 
of  the  maturer  work,  whose  sultrier  darkness  is 
visible  only  by  the  fire  kindled  of  itself,  very 
dreadful,  which  bums  in  the  heart  of  the  revenger 
whom  it  lights  along  his  blood-stained  way.  Nor 
indeed  is  any  relief  wanted;  the  harmony  of  its 
fervent  and  stem  emotion  is  as  perfect,  as  suffi- 
cient, as  sublime  as  the  full  rush  and  flow  of  its 
diction,  the  fier^^  majesty  of  its  verse.  There 
never  was  such  a  thunder-storm  of  a  play:  it 
quickens  and  exhilarates  the  sense  of  the  reader 
as  the  sense  of  a  healthy  man  or  boy  is  quickened 
and  exhilarated  by  the  rolling  music  of  a  tempest 
and  the  leaping  exultation  of  its  flames.  The 
strange  and  splendid  genius  which  inspired  it 
seems  now  not  merely  to  feel  that  it  does  well  to 
be  angry,  but  to  take  such  keen  enjoyment  in  that 
feeling,  to  drink  such  deep  delight  from  the  in- 
exhaustible wellsprings  of  its  wrath,  that  rage 
and  scorn  and  hatred  assume  something  of  the 
rapturous  quality  more  naturally  proper  to  faith 
and  hope  and  love.  There  is  not  a  breath  of  rant, 
not  a  pad  of  bombast,  in  the  declamation  which 
fills  its  dazzling  scenes  with  fire :  the  language  has 
no  more  perfect  models  of  style  than  the  finest  of 
its  more  sustained  and  elevated  passages.     The 


270         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

verse  is  unlike  any  other  man's  in  the  solemn 
passion  of  its  music:  if  it  reminds  us  of  Shake- 
speare's or  of  Webster's,  it  is  simply  by  right  of 
kinship  and  equality  of  power  with  the  most 
vivid  and  sonorous  verse  that  rings  from  the  lips 
of  Coriolanus  or  of  Timon,  of  Brachiano  or  the 
Duchess  of  Malfy ;  not  by  any  servility  of  disciple- 
ship  or  reverberation  of  an  imitative  echo.  It  is 
so  rich  and  full  and  supple,  so  happy  in  its  free- 
dom and  so  loyal  in  its  instinct,  that  its  veriest 
audacities  and  aberrations  have  an  indefinable 
harmony  of  their  own.  Even  if  we  admit  that 
Toumeur  is  to  Webster  but  as  Webster  is  to 
Shakespeare,  we  must  allow,  by  way  of  exception 
to  this  general  rule  of  relative  rank,  that  in  his 
noblest  hours  of  sustained  inspiration  he  is  at 
least  the  equal  of  the  greater  dramatist  on  the 
score  of  sublime  and  burning  eloquence,  poured 
forth  in  verse  like  the  rushing  of  a  mighty  wind, 
with  fitful  breaks  and  pauses  that  do  but  en- 
hance the  majestic  sweetness  and  perfection  of 
its  forward  movement,  the  strenuous  yet  spon- 
taneous energy  of  its  triumphant  ardor  in  ad- 
vance. 

To  these  magnificent  qualities  of  poetry  and 
passion  no  critic  of  the  slightest  note  or  the 
smallest  pretention  to  poetic  instinct  has  ever 
failed  to  do  ample  and  cordial  justice:  but  to  the 


CYRIL   TOURNEUR  271 

truthfulness  and  the  power  of  Cyril  Toumeur  as  a 
dramatic  student  and  painter  of  human  character 
not  only  has  such  justice  not  generally  been  done, 
but  grave  injustice  has  been  too  generally  shown. 
It  is  true  that  not  all  the  agents  in  the  evolution 
of  his  greater  tragedy  are  equally  or  sufficiently 
realized  and  vivified  as  active  and  distinct  figures  : 
true,  for  instance,  that  the  two  elder  sons  of  the 
duchess  are  little  more  than  conventional  outlines 
of  such  empty  violence  and  futile  ambition  as 
might  be  inferred  from  the  crude  and  puerile 
symbolism  of  their  respective  designations:  but 
the  third  brother  is  a  type  no  less  living  than 
revolting  and  no  less  dramatic  than  detestable: 
his  ruffian  cynicism  and  defiant  brutality  are  in 
life  and  death  alike  original  and  consistent, 
whether  they  express  themselves  in  curses  or  in 
jeers.  The  brother  and  accomplice  of  the  hero 
in  the  accomplishment  of  his  manifold  revenge 
is  seldom  much  more  than  a  serviceable  shadow : 
but  there  is  a  definite  difference  between  their 
sister  and  the  common  type  of  virginal  heroine 
who  figures  on  the  stage  of  almost  every  drama- 
tist then  writing;  the  author's  profound  and  noble 
reverence  for  goodness  gives  at  once  precision 
and  distinction  to  the  outline  and  a  glow  of 
active  life  to  the  color  of  this  pure  and  straight- 
forward study.     The  brilliant  simplicity  of  tone 


272         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

which  distinguishes  the  treatment  of  this  charac- 
ter is  less  remarkable  in  the  figure  of  the  mother 
whose  wickedness  and  weakness  are  so  easily 
played  upon  and  blown  about  by  every  gust  of 
penitence  or  temptation;  but  there  is  the  same 
life-like  vigor  of  touch  in  the  smallest  detail  of 
the  scenes  between  her  children  and  herself. 
It  has  been  objected  that  her  ready  avowal  of 
weakness  as  common  to  all  her  sex  is  the  un- 
dramatic  epigram  of  a  satirist,  awkwardly  ven- 
triloquizing through  the  mechanism  of  a  tragic 
puppet ;  but  it  is  really  quite  in  keeping  with  the 
woman's  character  to  enlarge  and  extenuate  the 
avowal  of  her  own  infamy  and  infirmity  into  a 
sententious  reflection  on  womanhood  in  general. 
A  similar  objection  has  been  raised  against  the 
apparent  change  of  character  implied  in  the  con- 
fession made  by  the  hero  to  the  duke  elect,  at  the 
close  of  the  play,  that  he  and  his  brother  had 
murdered  the  old  duke — "all  for  your  grace's 
good,"  and  in  the  cry  when  arrested  and  sen- 
tenced to  instant  execution,  "Heart,  was't  not  for 
your  good,  my  lord?"  But  if  this  seems  incom- 
patible with  the  high  sense  of  honor  and  of  wrong 
which  is  the  mainspring  of  Vindice's  implacable 
self-devotion  and  savage  unselfishness,  the  un- 
scrupulous ferocity  of  the  means  through  which 
his  revenge  is  worked  out  may  surely  be  supposed 


CYRIL   TOURNEUR  273 

to  have  blunted  the  edge  of  his  moral  perception, 
distorted  his  natural  instinct,  and  infected  his 
nobler  sympathies  with  some  taint  of  contagious 
egotism  and  pessimistic  obduracy  of  imagination. 
And  the  intensity  of  sympathy  with  which  this 
crowning  creation  of  the  poet's  severe  and  fiery 
genius  is  steadily  developed  and  displayed  should 
make  any  critic  of  reasonable  modesty  think  more 
than  twice  or  thrice  before  he  assumes  or  admits 
the  likelihood  or  the  possibility  of  so  gross  an 
error  or  so  grave  a  defect  in  the  conception  of  so 
great  an  artist.  For  if  the  claim  to  such  a  title 
might  be  disputed  in  the  case  of  a  claimant  who 
could  show  no  better  credentials  than  his  author- 
ship of  "The  Atheist's  Tragedy" — and  even  in 
that  far  from  faultless  work  of  genius  there  are 
manifest  and  manifold  signs,  not  merely  of  ex- 
cellence, but  of  greatness — the  claim  of  the  man 
who  could  write  "The  Revenger's  Tragedy"  is 
questionable  by  no  one  who  has  any  glimmering 
of  insight  or  perception  as  to  what  qualities  they 
are  which  confer  upon  a  writer  the  indisputable 
title  to  a  seat  in  the  upper  house  of  poets. 

This  master  work  of  Cyril  Toumeur,  the  most 
perfect  and  most  terrible  incarnation  of  the  idea 
of  retribution  impersonate  and  concentrated  re- 
venge that  ever  haunted  the  dreams  of  a  tragic 
poet  or  the  vigils  of  a  future  tyrannicide,  is  re- 


274         THE    AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 

sumed  and  embodied  in  a  figure  as  original  and 
as  impossible  to  forget,  for  any  one  who  has  ever 
felt  the  savage  fascination  of  its  presence,  as 
any  of  the  humaner  figures  evoked  and  immor- 
talized by  Shakespeare.  The  rage  of  Swift,  with- 
out his  insanity  and  impurity,  seems  to  utter  in 
every  word  the  healthier  if  no  less  consuming 
passion  of  a  heart  lacerated  by  indignation  and 
envenomed  by  contempt  as  absolute,  as  relent- 
less, and  as  inconsolable  as  his  own.  And  in  the 
very  torrent  of  the  man's  meditative  and  solitary 
passion,  a  very  Phlegethon  of  agony  and  fury 
and  ravenous  hunger  after  the  achievement  of  a 
desperate  expiation,  comes  the  sudden  touch  of 
sarcasm  which  serves  as  a  momentary  breakwater 
to  the  raging  tide  of  his  reflections,  and  reveals 
the  else  unfathomable  bitterness  of  a  spiritual 
Marah  that  no  plummet  even  of  his  own  sinking 
can  sound,  and  no  infusion  of  less  fiery  sorrow  or 
less  venomous  remembrance  can  sweeten.  The 
mourner  falls  to  scoffing,  the  justicer  becomes  a 
jester:  the  lover,  with  the  skull  of  his  murdered 
mistress  in  his  hand,  slides  into  such  reflections  on 
the  influence  of  her  living  beauty  as  would  beseem 
a  sexless  and  malignant  satirist  of  her  sex.  This 
power  of  self  -  abstraction  from  the  individual 
self,  this  impersonal  contemplation  of  a  personal 
wrong,  this  contemptuous  yet  passionate  scrutiny 


CYRIL   TOURNEUR  275 

of  the  very  emotions  which  rend  the  heart  and 
inflame  the  spirit  and  poison  the  very  blood  of 
the  thinker,  is  the  special  seal  or  sign  of  original 
inspiration  which  distinguishes  the  type  most 
representative  of  Toumeur's  genius,  most  signif- 
icant of  its  peculiar  bias  and  its  peculiar  force. 
Such  a  conception,  clothed  in  mere  prose  or  in 
merely  passable  verse,  would  be  proof  sufficient 
of  the  mental  power  which  conceived  it;  when 
expressed  in  such  verse  as  follows,  it  proves  at 
once  and  preserves  forever  the  claim  of  the  de- 
signer to  a  place  among  the  immortals : 

Thou  sallow  picture  of  my  poisoned  love, 
My  study's  ornament,  thou  shell  of  death. 
Once  the  bright  face  of  my  betrothed  lady, 
When  life  and  beauty  naturally  filled  out 
These  ragged  imperfections; 
When  two  heaven-pointed  diamonds  were  set 
In  these  unsightly  rings; — then  'twas  a  face 
So  far  beyond  the  artificial  shine 
Of  any  woman's  bought  complexion 
That  the  uprightest  man  (if  such  there  be, 
That  sin  but  seven  times  a  day)  broke  custom 
And  made  up  eight  with  looking  after  her. 

The  very  fall  of  the  verse  has  a  sort  of  fierce 
and  savage  pathos  in  the  note  of  it;  a  cadence 
which  comes  nearer  to  the  echo  of  such  laughter 
as  utters  the  cry  of  an  anguish  too  deep  for  weep- 
ing and  wailing,  for  curses  or  for  prayers,  than 


276         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

anything  in  dramatic  poetry  outside  the  part  of 
Hamlet.  It  would  be  a  conjecture  not  less 
plausible  than  futile,  though  perhaps  not  less 
futile  than  plausible,  which  should  suggest  that 
the  influence  of  Shakespeare's  Hamlet  may  be 
responsible  for  the  creation  of  Toumeur's  Vindice, 
and  the  influence  of  Toumeur's  Vindice  for  the 
creation  of  Shakespeare's  Timon.  It  is  a  cer- 
tainty indisputable  except  by  the  blatant  au- 
dacity of  immedicable  ignorance  that  the  only 
poet  to  whose  manner  and  style  the  style  and 
manner  of  Cyril  Toumeur  can  reasonably  be  said 
to  bear  any  considerable  resemblance  is  William 
Shakespeare.  The  more  curt  and  abrupt  style 
of  Webster  is  equally  unlike  the  general  style  of 
either.  And  if,  as  his  first  editor  observes,  "the 
parallel"  between  Tourneur  and  Marston,  "as 
far  as  it  goes,  is  so  obvious  that  it  is  not  worth 
drawing,"  it  is  no  less  certain  that  the  diverence 
between  the  genius  which  created  Andrugio  and 
the  genius  which  created  Vindice  is  at  least  as 
wide  as  the  points  of  resemblance  or  affinity  be- 
tween them  are  vivid  and  distinct.  While  Mar- 
ston's  imaginative  and  tragic  power  was  at  its 
highest,  his  style  was  crude  and  quaint,  turgid 
and  eccentric ;  when  he  had  cured  and  purified  it 
—  perhaps,  as  Gifford  suggests,  in  consequence 
of  Ben  Jonson's  unmerciful  but  salutary  ridicule 


CYRIL  TOURNEUR  277 

—  he  approved  himself  a  far  abler  writer  of 
comedy  or  tragicomedy  than  before,  but  his 
right  hand  had  forgotten  its  cunning  as  the  hand 
of  "a  tragic  penman."  Now  the  improvement 
of  Toumeur's  style,  an  improvement  amounting 
to  little  less  than  transfiguration,  keeps  time  with 
his  advance  as  a  student  of  character  and  a  tragic 
dramatist  as  distinguished  from  a  tragic  poet. 
The  style  of  his  earlier  play  has  much  of  beauty, 
of  facility,  and  of  freshness :  the  style  of  his  later 
play,  I  must  repeat,  is  comparable  only  with 
Shakespeare's.  In  the  superb  and  inexhaustible 
imprecations  of  Timon  there  is  a  quality  which 
reminds  us  of  Cyril  Toumeur  as  delightfully  as  we 
are  painfully  reminded  of  John  Marston  in  read- 
ing certain  scenes  and  passages  which  disfigure 
and  deface  the  magnificent  but  incomprehensible 
composition  of  "Troilus  and  Cressida." 

Of  Toumeur's  two  elegies  on  the  death  of  Sir 
Francis  Vere  and  of  Henry  Prince  of  Wales,  it 
may  be  said  that  they  are  about  as  good  as 
Chapman's  work  of  the  same  order:  and  it  may 
be  added  that  his  first  editor  has  shown  himself, 
to  say  the  least,  unreasonably  and  unaccountably 
virulent  in  his  denunciation  of  what  he  assumes  to 
be  insincere  and  sycophantic  in  the  elegiac  ex- 
pression of  the  poet's  regret  for  a  prince  of  such 
noble  promise  as  the  elder  brother  of  Charles  I. 


2  78         THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 

The  most  earnest  and  fervent  of  republicans,  if 
not  wanting  in  common-sense  and  common  cour- 
tesy, would  not  dream  of  reflecting  in  terms  of 
such  unqualified  severity  on  the  lamentation  of 
Lord  Tennyson  for  the  loss  of  Albert  the  Good: 
and  the  warmest  admirer  of  that  loudly  lamented 
person  will  scarcely  maintain  that  this  loss  was 
of  such  grave  importance  to  England  as  the  loss 
of  a  prince  who  might  probably  have  preserved 
the  country  from  the  alternate  oppression  of  pre- 
lates and  of  Puritans,  from  the  social  tyranny 
of  a  dictator  and  the  political  disgrace  of  the 
Restoration. 

The  existence  of  a  comedy  by  the  author  of 
"The  Revenger's  Tragedy,"  and  of  a  comedy 
bearing  the  suggestive  if  not  provocative  title  of 
"Laugh  and  Lie  Down,"  must  always  have 
seemed  to  the  students  of  Lowndes  one  of  the 
most  curious  and  amusing  pieces  of  information 
to  be  gathered  from  the  "  Bibliographer's  Man- 
ual;" and  it  is  with  a  sense  of  disappointment 
proportionate  to  this  sense  of  curiosity  that  they 
will  discover  the  non-existence  of  such  a  comedy, 
and  the  existence  in  its  stead  of  a  mere  pamphlet 
in  prose  issued  under  that  more  than  promising 
title:  which  yet,  if  attainable,  ought  surely  to  be 
reprinted,  however  dubious  may  be  its  claim 
to  the  honor  of  a  great  poet's  authorship.     In 


CYRIL   TOURNEUR  279 

no  case  can  it  possibly  be  of  less  interest  or  value 
than  the  earliest  extant  publication  of  that  poet 
— "The  Transformed  Metamorphosis."  Its  first 
editor  has  given  proof  of  very  commendable 
perseverance  and  fairly  creditable  perspicacity 
in  his  devoted  attempt  at  elucidation  of  this 
most  astonishing  and  indescribable  piece  of  work  : 
but  no  interpretation  of  it  can  hope  to  be  more 
certain  or  more  trustworthy  than  any  possible 
exposition  of  Blake's  "Jerusalem"  or  the  Apoc- 
alypse of  St.  John.  All  that  can  be  said  by  a 
modest  and  judicious  reader  is  that  any  one  of 
these  three  effusions  may  unquestionably  mean 
anything  that  anybody  chooses  to  read  into  the 
text;  that  a  Luther  is  as  safe  as  a  Loyola,  that  a 
Renan  is  no  safer  than  a  Gumming,  from  the 
chance  of  confutation  as  a  less  than  plausible 
exponent  of  its  possible  significance:  but  that, 
however  indisputable  it  may  be  that  they  were 
meant  to  mean  something,  not  many  human 
creatures  who  can  be  trusted  to  go  abroad  with- 
out a  keeper  will  be  likely  to  pretend  to  a  positive 
understanding  of  what  that  significance  may  be. 
To  me,  the  most  remarkable  point  in  Tourneur's 
problematic  poem  is  the  fact  that  this  most 
monstrous  example  of  senseless  and  barbarous 
jargon  that  ever  disfigured  English  type  should 
have  been  written — were  it  even  for  a  wager — 


28o  THE  AGE  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

by  one  of  the  purest,  simplest,  most  exquisite 
and  most  powerful  writers  in  the  language. 

This  extraordinary  effusion  is  the  single  and 
certainly  the  sufficient  tribute  of  a  great  poet, 
and  a  great  master  of  the  purest  and  the  no- 
blest English,  to  the  most  monstrous  and  pre- 
posterous taste  or  fashion  of  his  time.  As  the 
product  of  an  eccentric  imbecile  it  would  be  no 
less  curious  than  Stanihurst's  Virgil:  as  the  work 
of  Cyril  Toumeur  it  is  indeed  ' '  a  miracle  instead 
of  wit. "  For  it  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that 
in  mere  style,  in  commanding  power  and  purity  of 
language,  in  positive  instinct  of  expression  and  di- 
rect eloquence  of  inspiration,  the  author  of  "The 
Revenger's  Tragedy"  stands  alone  in  the  next 
rank  to  Shakespeare.  Many  if  not  most  of  their 
contemporaries  could  compose  a  better  play  than 
he  probably  could  conceive — a  play  with  finer 
variation  of  incidents  and  daintier  diversity  of 
characters:  not  one  of  them,  not  even  Webster 
himself,  could  pour  forth  poetry  of  such  con- 
tinuous force  and  flow.  The  fiery  jet  of  his 
molten  verse,  the  rush  of  its  radiant  and  rhythmic 
lava,  seems  alone  as  inexhaustible  as  that  of 
Shakespeare's.  As  a  dramatist,  his  faults  are 
doubtless  as  flagrant  as  his  merits  are  manifest: 
as  a  writer,  he  is  one  of  the  very  few  poets  who  in 
their  happiest  moments  are  equally  faultless  and 


CYRIL   TOURNEUR  281 

sublime.  The  tone  of  thought  or  of  feeling  which 
gives  form  and  color  to  this  splendid  poetic  style 
is  so  essentially  what  modem  criticism  would 
define  as  that  of  a  natural  Hebraist,  and  so 
far  from  that  of  a  Hellenist  or  Latinist  of  the 
Renascence,  that  we  recognize  in  this  great  poet 
one  more  of  those  Englishmen  of  genius  on  whom 
the  direct  or  indirect  influence  of  the  Hebrew 
Bible  has  been  actually  as  great  as  the  influences 
of  the  country  and  the  century  in  which  they 
happened  to  be  bom.  The  single-hearted  fury 
of  unselfish  and  devoted  indignation  which  ani- 
mates every  line  of  his  satire  is  more  akin  to  the 
spirit  of  Ezekiel  or  Isaiah  than  to  the  spirit  of 
Juvenal  or  Persius:  though  the  fierce  literality 
of  occasional  detail,  the  prosaic  accuracy  of  im- 
placable and  introspective  abhorrence,  may  seem 
liker  the  hard  Roman  style  of  impeachment 
by  photography  than  the  great  Hebrew  method 
of  denunciation  by  appeal.  But  the  fusion  of 
sarcastic  realism  with  imaginative  passion  pro- 
duces a  compound  of  such  peculiar  and  fiery 
flavor  as  we  taste  only  from  the  tragic  chalice 
of  Toumeur  or  of  Shakespeare.  The  bitterness 
which  serves  but  as  a  sauce  or  spice  to  the  medi- 
tative rhapsodies  of  Marston's  heroes  or  of  Web- 
ster's villains  is  the  dominant  quality  of  the 
meats  and  wines  served  up  on  the  stage  which 


282         THE   AGE   OF    SHAKESPEARE 

echoes  to  the  cry  of  Vindice  or  of  Timon.  But 
the  figure  of  Toumeur's  typic  hero  is  as  distinct 
in  its  difference  from  the  Shakespearean  figure 
which  may  possibly  have  suggested  it  as  in  its 
difference  from  the  Shakespearean  figure  which 
it  may  not  impossibly  have  suggested.  There  is 
perhaps  too  much  play  made  with  skulls  and 
cross-bones  on  the  stage  of  Cyril  Toumeur:  he 
cannot  apparently  realize  the  fact  that  they  are 
properties  of  which  a  thoughtful  poet's  use  should 
be  as  temperate  and  occasional  as  Shakespeare's : 
but  the  graveyard  meditations  of  Hamlet,  perfect 
in  dramatic  tact  and  instinct,  seem  cool  and  com- 
mon and  shallow  in  sentiment  when  set  beside  the 
intensity  of  inspiration  which  animates  the  fitful 
and  impetuous  music  of  such  passages  as  these: 

Here  's  an  eye 
Able  to  tempt  a  great  man — to  serve  God; 
A  pretty  hanging  lip,  that  has  forgot  now  to  dissemble, 
Methinks  this  mouth  should  make  a  swearer  tremble, 
A  drunkard  clasp  his  teeth,  and  not  undo  'em 
To  suffer  wet  damnation  to  run  through  'em. 
Here's  a  cheek  keeps  her  color  let  the  wind  go  whistle; 
Spout,  rain,  we  fear  thee  not:  be  hot  or  cold, 
All  's  one  with  us;  and  is  not  he  absurd. 
Whose  fortunes  are  upon  their  faces  set 
That  fear  no  other  God  but  wind  and  wet? 

Ilippolitn.  Brother,  y'ave  spoke  that  right; 
Is  this  the  face  that  living  shone  so  bright? 

Vindice.  The  very  same. 
And  now  methinks  I  could  e'en  chide  myself 


CYRIL  TOURNEUR  283 

For  doting  on  her  beauty,  though  her  death 

Shall  be  revenged  after  no  common  action. 

Does  the  silk-worm  expend  her  yellow  labors 

For  thee?  for  thee  does  she  undo  herself? 

Are  lordships  sold  to  maintain  ladyships 

For  the  poor  benefit  of  a  bewitching  minute?' 

Why  does  yon  fellow  falsify  highways 

And  put  his  life  between  the  judge's  lips, 

To  refine  such  a  thing,  keeps  horse  and  men 

To  beat  their  valors  for  her? 

Surely  we're  all  mad  people,  and  they^ 

Whom  we  think  are,  are  not:  we  mistake  those: 

'Tis  we  are  mad  in  sense,  they  but  in  clothes. 

Hippolito.   'Faith,  and  in  clothes  too  we,  give  us  our 
due. 

Vindice.  Does  every  proud  and  self-affecting  dame 
Camphire  her  face  for  this  ?  and  grieve  her  Maker 
In  sinful  baths  of  milk — when  many  an  infant  starves, 
For  her  superfluous  outside, — all  for  this? 

What  follows  is  no  whit  less  noble:  but  as 
much  may  be  said  of  the  whole  part — and  indeed 
of  the  whole  play.  Violent  and  extravagant  as 
the  mere  action  or  circumstance  may  be  or  may 
appear,  there  is  a  trenchant  straightforwardness 

'  This  is  not,  I  take  it,  one  of  the  poet's  irregular  though 
not  unmusical  lines;  the  five  short  unemphatic  syllables, 
rapidly  run  together  in  one  slurring  note  of  scorn,  being  not 
more  than  equivalent  in  metrical  weight  to  three  such  as 
would  take  their  places  if  the  verse  were  thus  altered — and 
impaired : 

For  the  poor  price  of  one  bewitching  minute. 

^  Perhaps  we  might  venture  here  to  read — ' '  and  only 
they."  In  the  next  line,  "whom"  for  "who"  is  probably 
the  poet's  own  license  or  oversight. 


284        THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

of  appeal  in  the  simple  and  spontaneous  magnif- 
icence of  the  language,  a  depth  of  insuppressible 
sincerity  in  the  fervent  and  restless  vibration  of 
the  thought,  by  which  the  hand  and  the  brain 
and  the  heart  of  the  workman  are  equally  rec- 
ognizable. But  the  crowning  example  of  Cyril 
Toumeur's  unique  and  incomparable  genius  is  of 
course  to  be  found  in  the  scene  which  would  as- 
suredly be  remembered,  though  every  other  line 
of  the  poet's  writing  were  forgotten,  by  the  in- 
fluence of  its  passionate  inspiration  on  the  more 
tender  but  not  less  noble  sympathies  of  Charles 
Lamb.  Even  the  splendid  exuberance  of  eulogy 
which  attributes  to  the  verse  of  Toumeur  a  more 
fiery  quality,  a  more  thrilling  and  piercing  note 
of  sublime  and  agonizing  indignation,  than  that 
which  animates  and  inflames  the  address  of 
Hamlet  to  a  mother  less  impudent  in  infamy  than 
Vindice's  cannot  be  considered  excessive  by  any 
capable  reader  who  will  candidly  and  carefully 
compare  the  two  scenes  which  suggested  this 
comparison.  To  attempt  the  praise  or  the  de- 
scription of  anything  that  has  been  praised  or 
described  by  Lamb  would  usually  be  the  veriest 
fatuity  of  presumption :  and  yet  it  is  impossible  to 
write  of  a  poet  whose  greatness  was  first  revealed 
to  his  countrymen  by  the  greatest  critic  of 
dramatic  poetry  that  ever  lived  and  wrote,  and 


CYRIL  TOURNEUR  285 

not  to  echo  his  words  of  righteous  judgment  and 
inspired  applause  with  more  or  less  feebleness  of 
reiteration.  The  startling  and  magical  power  of 
single  verses,  ineffaceable  and  ineradicable  from 
the  memory  on  which  they  have  once  impressed 
themselves,  the  consciousness  in  which  they  have 
once  struck  root,  which  distinguishes  and  de- 
notes the  peculiar  style  of  Cyril  Toumeur's 
tragic  poetry,  rises  to  its  highest  tidemark  in 
this  part  of  the  play.  Every  other  line,  one 
might  almost  say,  is  an  instance  of  it;  and  yet 
not  a  single  line  is  undramatic,  or  deficient  in  the 
strictest  and  plainest  dramatic  propriety.  It 
may  be  objected  that  men  and  women  possessed 
by  the  excitement  of  emotions  so  desperate  and 
so  dreadful  do  not  express  them  with  such  pas- 
sionate precision  of  utterance:  but,  to  borrow  the 
saying  of  a  later  and  more  famous  bearer  of  the 
name  which  Cyril  sometimes  spelled  as  Turner, 
"don't  they  wish  they  could?"  or  rather,  ought 
they  not  to  wish  it  ?  What  is  said  by  the  speak- 
ers is  exactly  what  they  might  be  expected  to 
think,  to  feel,  and  to  express  with  less  incisive 
power  and  less  impressive  accuracy  of  ardent 
epigram  or  of  strenuous  appeal.^ 

*  It  is,  to  say  the  least,  singular  to  find  in  the  most  fa- 
mous scene  of  a  play  so  often  reprinted  and  re-edited  a  word 
which  certainly  rec^uires  explanation  passed  over  without  re- 


286         THE    AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

There  are  among  poets,  as  there  are  among 
prose  writers,  some  whose  peculiar  power  finds 
vent  only  in  a  broad  and  rushing  stream  of  speech 

mark  from  any  one  of  the  successive  editors.  When  Grati- 
ana,  threatened  by  the  daggers  of  her  sons,  exclaims: 

Are  you  so  barbarous  to  set  iron  nipples 
Upon  the  breast  that  gave  you  suck? 

Vindice  retorts,  in  reply  to  her  appeal: 

That  breast 
Is  turned  to  quarled  poison. 

This  last  epithet  is  surely  unusual  enough  to  call  for  some 
attempt  at  interpretation.  But  none  whatever  has  hitherto 
been  offered.  In  the  seventh  line  following  from  this  one 
there  is  another  textual  difficulty.  The  edition  now  before 
me,  Eld's  of  1608,  reads  literally  thus: 

Vind.  Ah  ist  possible.  Thou  onely,  you  powers  on  hie, 
That  women  should  dissemble  when  they  die. 

Lamb  was  content  to  read, 

Ah,  is  it  possible,  you  powers  on  high, 

and  so  forth.  Perhaps  the  two  obviously  corrupt  words  in 
italics  may  contain  a  clew  to  the  right  reading,  and  this  may 
be  it: 

Ah! 

Is't  possible,  you  heavenly  powers  on  high. 

That  women  should  dissemble  when  they  die  ? 

Or  may  not  this  be  yet  another  instance  of  the  Jew- Puritan 
abhorrence  of  the  word  God  as  an  obscene  or  blasphemous 
term  when  uttered  outside  the  synagogue  or  the  conventicle  ? 
If  so,  we  might  read — and  believe  that  the  poet  wrote — 

Is't  possible,  thou  only  God  on  high, 

and  assume  that  the  licenser  struck  out  the  indecent  monosyl- 
lable and  left  the  mutilated  text  for  actors  and  printers  to 
patch  or  pad  at  their  discretion. 


CYRIL  TOURNEUR  287 

or  song,  triumphant  by  the  general  force  and 
fulness  of  its  volume,  in  which  we  no  more  think 
of  looking  for  single  lines  or  phrases  that  may  be 
detached  from  the  context  and  quoted  for  their 
separate  effect  than  of  selecting  for  peculiar  ad- 
miration some  special  wave  or  individual  ripple 
from  the  multitudinous  magnificence  of  the  tor- 
rent or  the  tide.  There  are  others  whose  power 
is  shown  mainly  in  single  strokes  or  flashes  as  of 
lightning  or  of  swords.  There  are  few  indeed 
outside  the  pale  of  the  very  greatest  who  can 
display  at  will  their  natural  genius  in  the  keenest 
concentration  or  the  fullest  effusion  of  its  powers. 
But  among  these  fewer  than  few  stands  the  au- 
thor of  "The  Revenger's  Tragedy."  The  great 
scene  of  the  temptation  and  the  triumph  of  Cas- 
tiza  would  alone  be  enough  to  give  evidence,  not 
adequate  merely  but  ample,  that  such  praise  as 
this  is  no  hyperbole  of  sympathetic  enthusiasm, 
but  simply  the  accurate  expression  of  an  indis- 
putable fact.  No  lyrist,  no  satirist,  could  have 
excelled  in  fiery  flow  of  rhetoric  the  copious  and 
impetuous  eloquence  of  the  lines,  at  once  luxuri- 
ous and  sardonic,  cynical  and  seductive,  in  which 
Vindice  pours  forth  the  arguments  and  rolls  out 
the  promises  of  a  professional  pleader  on  behalf 
of  aspiring  self-interest  and  sensual  self-indul- 
gence: no  dramatist  that  ever  lived  could  have 


288         THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 

put  more  vital  emotion  into  fewer  words,  more 
passionate  reality  into  more  perfect  utterance, 
than  Toumeur  in  the  dialogue  that  follows 
them: 

Mother.  Troth,  he  says  true. 

Castiza.  False :  I  defy  you  both : 

I  have  endured  you  with  an  ear  of  fire: 
Your  tongues  have  struck  hot  irons  on  my  face. 
Mother,  come  from  that  poisonous  woman  there. 

Mother.  Where? 

Castiza.  Do  you  not  see  her  ?  she's  too  inward  then. 

I  could  not  count  the  lines  which  on  reperusal 
of  this  great  tragic  poem  I  find  apt  for  illustrative 
quotation,  or  suggestive  of  a  tributary  comment: 
but  enough  has  already  been  cited  to  prove  be- 
yond all  chance  of  cavil  from  any  student  worthy 
of  the  name  that  the  place  of  Cyril  Toumeur  is 
not  among  minor  poets,  nor  his  genius  of  such  a 
temper  as  naturally  to  attract  the  sympathy  or 
arouse  the  enthusiasm  of  their  admirers;  that 
among  the  comrades  or  the  disciples  who  to  us 
may  appear  but  as  retainers  or  satellites  of  Shake- 
speare his  rank  is  high  and  his  credentials  to  that 
rank  are  clear.  That  an  edition  more  carefully 
revised  and  annotated,  with  a  text  reduced  to 
something  more  of  coherence  and  intelligible  ar- 
rangement, than  has  yet  been  vouchsafed  to  us, 
would  suffice  to  place  his  name  among  theirs  of 


CYRIL   TOURNEUR  289 

whose  eminence  the  very  humblest  of  their  edu- 
cated countrymen  are  ashamed  to  seem  igno- 
rant, it  would  probably  be  presumptuous  to 
assert.  But  if  the  noblest  ardor  of  moral  emo- 
tion, the  most  fervent  passion  of  eager  and  in- 
dignant sympathy  with  all  that  is  best  and  ab- 
horrence of  all  that  is  worst  in  women  or  in  men 
— if  the  most  absolute  and  imperial  command  of 
all  resources  and  conquest  of  all  difficulties  in- 
herent in  the  most  effective  and  the  most  various 
instrument  ever  yet  devised  for  the  poetry  of  the 
tragic  drama  —  if  the  keenest  insight  and  the 
sublimest  impulse  that  can  guide  the  perception 
and  animate  the  expression  of  a  poet  whose  line 
of  work  is  naturally  confined  to  the  limits  of 
moral  or  ethical  tragedy — if  all  these  qualities 
may  be  admitted  to  confer  a  right  to  remem- 
brance and  a  claim  to  regard,  there  can  be  no 
fear  and  no  danger  of  forgetfulness  for  the  name 
of  Cyril  Toumeur. 


INDEX 


Action,  relation  to  charac- 
ter, 245. 

Adventure,  subjectfor  drama, 
242. 

^schylus,  Shakespeare  com- 
pared with,  31;  Webster 
compared  with,    52. 

Allegory,  102,  168,  170,  179, 
180. 

AUeyn,   189. 

"All  Fools"  (Chapman),  259. 

"All's  Lost  by  Lust,"  196. 

Amadis,  214. 

"Amboyna"  (Dryden),  82. 

"Amphitruo,"  the,  217. 

"Antipodes,  The,"  252. 

Antiquary,  The  (Scott),  84. 

"Antonio  and  Mellida" 
(Marston),  30,  116,  117, 
122,   124,   145,   148. 

"Antonio's  Revenge"  (Mars- 
ton),   122. 

"Anything  for  a  Quiet  Life" 
(Middleton) ,    163. 

"  Appius  and  Virginia"  (Web- 
ster), 198. 

Arbuthnot,   228. 

Ariosto,   no. 

Aristophanes,  Middleton 
compared  with,  169;  cari- 
caturist, 206. 

Armada,   168,  206. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  on  Chap- 
man,  107. 


Asdrubal,    speech   of    (Mars- 
ton),   118. 
"Asolani,"   209. 
"  Astrsea  Redux,"  authorship, 

157- 
Astrophel  and  Stella,  66. 
"Atheist's   Tragedy,  The" 

(Tourneur),    265;    reflects 

the  age,  268,  273. 
Athens,   169. 
Audience  in  Shakespeare's 

age,  170,  245. 

"Bachelor's  Banquet, 
The"  (Dekker),  97. 

Bacon,  Francis,  68,  256. 

Balzac,  Shakespeare  and 
Marlowe  compared  with, 
2,^ ;  Dekker  compared  with, 
108. 

Barkstead,  William,  136. 

Barnfield,   50. 

"Bartholomew  Fair"  (Mars- 
ton),   122. 

Beaumont,  172;  and  Fletcher, 
182,  225. 

"Beggars'  Bush"  (Fletcher), 
178. 

"Bellman  of  London,  The," 
(Dekker),    10 1. 

Bembo,  Pietro,  209. 

Bible,  Hebrew,  influence  of, 
281. 

Biographer' s  Manual,  278. 


292 


THE   AGE   OF   SHAKESPEARE 


Biographical  Chronicle  of  the 
English  Drama  (Fleay), 
205. 

Bishop  Hall,  163. 

Blake,  William,  Dekker  com- 
pared to,  72;  "Jerusalem," 
279. 

Blank  verse,  i,  2,  224. 

•'  Blind  Beggar  of  Alexan- 
dria,   The"     (Chapman), 

193- 

Boccaccio,  Dekker  compared 
with,   108. 

Boswell,   162. 

"Brazen  Age,  The,"  218. 

"Britannia's  Honor,"  84. 

British  Museum,  193. 

Brome,   252. 

Bronte,  Charlotte,  40. 

Browning,  Heywood  com- 
pared with,   236. 

Bullen,  on  Marston,  135;  on 
Elizabethan  songs,  137;  on 
Marlowe,  151;  on  Middle- 
ton,  154,  163,  165,  168, 
172,  179,  181;  on  Heywood, 
228,  230,  235. 

Burbage,  189. 

"  Bussy  d'Ambois"  (Chap- 
man),  259. 

"  Butcher's  Story,  The,"  160. 

Butler,  parody  Cat  and  Puss, 
226. 

Byron,  3,  38;  Jonson  com- 
pared with,  71,  201,  267; 
Tourneur  compared  witn, 
264. 

Cade,  Jack,   ii. 

"Cassarand  Pompey,"  259. 

Campbell,  Thomas,  on  Web- 
ster, 37. 

"Canaan's  Calamity,"  92. 

"Captives,  The,"  230. 

Caricature,  motive  in  drama, 
206, 


Carlyle,  93 ;  definition  of  gen- 
ius, 109,  207 ;  Tourneur 
compared  with,  264. 

Carr,  Robert,  256. 

Cat  and  Puss  (Butler),  226. 

Catholic  formula,   191. 

"Catiline  his  Conspiracy" 
(Jonson),   144. 

Caxton.   213,  214,  219. 

"Cenci"   (Shelley),   16. 

Cent  Nouvelles  Nouvelles,  93. 

"Challenge  for  Beauty,  The" 
(Heywood),  212,  231,  234, 

235-  ,     , 

Chalmers  on  Queen  Elizabeth, 
69. 

"Changeling,  The"  (Middle- 
ton),  30,   186. 

Chapman,  George  (255-261), 
Matthew  Arnold  on,  107; 
part  in  "Eastward  Ho!", 
129,  130;  plays  unedited, 
152;  "Blind  Beggar,"  193; 
in  (jermany,  255;  transla- 
tion of  Juvenal,  256;  faults 
of  style,  257;  Homer,  258; 
Keats  on,  258;  sources 
from  French  history,  258; 
Shelley  on,  258  ;  tragedy 
and  comedy,  259;  contact 
with  Shakespeare,  260;  feel- 
ing towardotherpoets,  260. 

"Chaste  Maid  at  Cheapside, 
A,"  Middleton  and  Shir- 
ley (?),  163. 

Chaucer,  i,  72;  Middleton 
compared  with,  177,  247. 

Chester,  Sir  Robert,  137,  138. 

Chettle,  72,  87,  205. 

"Childe  Harold's  Pilgrim- 
age," 264. 

"Chronicle  History  of  Thomas 
Lord  Cromwell,"  19. 

"  Chronographicall  History  of 
all  the  Kings  "  (Heywood), 


INDEX 


293 


"Christmas  Carol,  A,"  229 

Chronicle  plays,  203, 206,  207, 
208. 

Clown,  the,  230,  236. 

Coleridge,  on  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  29;  on  Dekker, 
88,  150;  love  of  country, 
202,  254;  on  Chapman, 
258. 

Collier,  on  Marlowe,  7. 

Collingwood,  254. 

Colman,  George,  231. 

Comedy,  French  and  Latin, 
133;  early  specimens,  156, 
157;  in  Dekker,  Jonson, 
Shakespeare,  and  Middle- 
ton,  158. 

"  Conquest  of  Granada,  The," 
226. 

"  Contention  between  the  two 
Famous  Houses,  etc.,"  9. 

"Contes  Drolatiques,"  161. 

"Coriolanus,"   270. 

Corneille,  treatment  of  Psy- 
che, 222. 

Couplet,  in  dramatic  verse, 
204;  treatment  by  Jonson, 
Marlowe,  Shakespeare,  205. 

Critics,  incompetence,  37,  38. 

"Cure  for  a  Cuckold,  A,"  24. 

Daniel,  "Defence  of 
Rhyme,"   107. 

Dante,  Webster  compared 
with,  33,  52;  Marston  com- 
pared with,  119;  love  of 
country,  202. 

Day,  87,  205. 

"  Dead  Term, The"  (Dekker), 
102. 

Decatncron,  93. 

"  Defence  of  Rhyme,"  107. 

Dekker,  Thomas  (61 -112); 
coUab.  with  Webster,  19; 
part  in  "Westward  Ho!", 
20;   comic  style,    21,    158; 


collab.  with  Marston  and 
Middleton,  30  ;  Francois 
Villon  compared  with,  61, 
62;  tenderness  like  Shake- 
speare, 62;  compared  with 
Jonson,  69-71;  with  Blake 
and  Shelley,  72;  moral 
force,  73;  satirist,  75;  Hunt 
and  Hazlitt  on,  78;  com- 
pared with  Webster,  Ford, 
and  Middleton,  81;  with 
Massinger,  87  ;  Coleridge 
on,  88;  Kingsley  on,  89,  90; 
compared  with  Dickens, 
102,  107;  modern  writers 
compared  with,  106-108; 
humorist,  106;  style  com- 
pared with  Dryden,  107; 
likened  to  Boccaccio,  108; 
as  man  and  poet,  112; 
plays  unedited,  152;  collab. 
with  Middleton,  161  ;  alle- 
gory compared  with  Mid- 
dleton, 168;  Rowley  com- 
pared with,  191,  193;  faults, 
194;  imitated  by  Rowley, 
195;  use  of  foreign  words, 
247. 

Deloney,  Thomas,  91,  92. 

Demonology,   161. 

Desdemona,  type  of  hero- 
ine,  57. 

Devereux,  Robert,  256. 

"Devil's  Answer  to  Pierce 
Penniless,  The"  (Dekker), 

95- 
"Devil's    Law-case,    The" 
(Webster),  25,  27,  30,  32, 

49.   53- 

"Dick  of  Devonshire,"   235. 

Dickens,  Dekker  compared 
with,  102,  107,  160;  Mid- 
dleton compared  with,  163. 

Diderot,  266. 

"Dido,  Queen  of  Carthage" 
(Marlowe),  8. 


294 


THE    AGE    OF   SHAKESPEARE 


Dilke,  Old  Plays,  154. 

"Dr.  Faustus"  (Marlowe),  2, 

4,  6,  II. 
Dodsley's  Old  Plays,  195. 
Don  Juan,  214. 
Donne,  John,   126,  257. 
Don  Quixote,  229. 
"  Double  PP,  The,  etc.,"  97. 
Drake,  Sir  Francis,  18. 
Dramatic   poetry,    evolution 

of,  216. 
"Dream,      The"      (Dekker), 

100. 
Drue,  Thomas,  207. 
Dryden,    82;     Dekker    com- 
pared with,  107,  157,  221, 

226. 
"Duchess    of    Malfy,    The" 

(Webster),  16,  32,  37,   53, 

55.   270. 
"Duchess  of   Suffolk,   The,' 

207. 
"  DuKe  of  Milan,  The,"  30. 
"Dutch  Courtesan,   The" 

(Marston),   122,   130-133, 

146. 
Dyce,  II,  22,  23,  76,  151,  153, 

180;    on    Webster,    40;    on 

Middleton,    154,    157,    172; 

on  Hey  wood,  232. 

"Earthly  Paradise,  The," 

215- 
"Eastward  Ho!",  129,  130. 

"  Ecole  des  Maris,"  134. 
"Edward  II."  (Marlowe),  6, 

208. 
Elegies,    Ovid's,    12;    Tour- 

neur's,    277  ;    Tennyson's, 

278. 
"  Englishmen  for  My  Money," 

85- 
English  language,  dignity, 

228. 
"English    Traveller,  The," 

240. 


"Entertainment"  (Marston), 

136. 
Essex,  Earl  of,  256. 
Euphuism,    147. 
Euripides,  37,   169. 

"Fair  Maid  of  the  Ex- 
change, The,"  237. 

"  Fair  Maid  of  the  Inn,  The" 
(Fletcher),   26. 

"  Fair  Maid  of  the  West ,  The ' ' 
(Heywood),  212,  241,  243. 

"Fair  Quarrel,  A"  (Middle- 
ton),    165,   167. 

Falstaflf,   179. 

"  Family  of  Love,  The  "  (Mid- 
dleton), 159,  181. 

"Famous  History  of  Sir 
Thomas  Wyatt,  The,"  19. 

"Fatal  Curiosity"  (Hey- 
wood), 239. 

First  great  English  poet,  i  ,189. 

Flamineo,   48,    52. 

Fleay,  Biographical  Chronicle, 
205;  on  Heywood,  228,  246, 
249. 

Fletcher,  "Fair  Maid  of  the 
Inn,  The,"  26  ;  Webster 
compared  with,  26;  trag- 
ic poet,  30;  compared  with 
Shakespeare,  65;  comic 
style,  165;  metrical  beauty, 
172,  174;  Middleton  com- 
pared with,  172,  174,  178; 
collab.  with  Beaumont, 
182;  realism,  214;  Hey- 
wood compared  with,  232; 
faults,  234;  "Flitcher," 
237;  Chapman's  feeling 
toward,  260. 

Ford,  81,  172,  177. 

Foreign  words,  abuse  of,  246. 

"  Fortune  by  Land  and  Sea," 
243,  244. 

"  Four  Brides  of  Noah's  Ark,  ' 
106. 


INDEX 


295 


"Four  Prentices  of  London, 
The,"  193,  225,  228. 

Francis  I.,  258. 

Franklin,   254. 

French  comedy,   133. 

French  history,  source  for 
Chapman,   258. 

Froissart,   229. 

"Game  at  Chess,  A,"  157, 

Gautier,  231. 

"Gentle  Craft,  The"  (Dek- 
ker),  64. 

"Gentleman  Usher,  The" 
(Chapman),   259. 

German  criticism,   19. 

Gifford,  on  Dekker  and  Jon- 
son,  69,  70,  90;  on  Mars- 
ton,   122,  276. 

Gil  Bias,  210. 

Giocondo,  no. 

"Gloriana"   (Lee),  82. 

Glover,  38. 

God ,  as  term  in  literature  ,286. 

Goethe,  on  Marlowe,  2,  3. 

"Golden  Age,  The"  (Hay- 
wood), 216. 

Goldsmith,  Dekker  compared 
with,    106. 

Greene,  Robert,  50,  73,  loi. 

Grenville,  Richard,  18. 

"Grim  the  Collier  of  Croy- 
don," 84. 

Grosart,  Barnfield,  51;  on 
Dekker,  91,  99;  on  Mars- 
ton,   126. 

"Gull's  Hornbook,  The" 
(Dekker),  97. 

Hall,   125. 

Hallam  on  HeyTVOod,  3,  199, 
232. 

"Hamlet,"  144,  176,  179;  in- 
fluence on  Tourneur,  276, 
282,  284. 


Haughton,   73,  87. 

Hazlitt,  on  Dekker,  78,  79, 
181,  190;  on  Heywood,  201. 

Hebrew  Bible,  influence  of, 
281. 

"  Heliogabalus,"   231. 

Henry  IV.,  reign  of,  258. 

Henry,  Prince  of  Wales,  256. 

"Hero  and  Leander"  (Mar- 
lowe), 13,  136,  256. 

Heroine,  orthodox  ideal  of, 
247;  cf.  also  157  note. 

Hesiod,   256. 

Heywood,  Thomas  (200- 
254),  realism,  65,  215; 
"The  Royal  King,"  etc., 
193;  characters  from  life, 
201;  love  of  country,  202; 
of  London,  202  ;  pathos 
and  humor,  204;  patriot- 
ism, 210;  imitator  of  Theoc- 
ritus, 214;  William  Morris 
compared  with,  215;  power 
of  condensation,  217;  char- 
acter as  poet,  224,  225;  in- 
fluence of  civic  services, 
226;  compared  with  Fletch- 
er, 232  ;  best  play,  233, 
234;  national  quality  in, 
236,  254;  dramatic  force, 
245;  disciple  of  Jonson, 
251;  prose,  253;  story-tell- 
ing, 253. 

"  Hierarchie  of  the  Blessed 
Angels,  The"  (Heywood), 
212. 

"  Hippolytus,"  37. 

History,  treatment  on  stage, 
18,   19. 

"  Histriomatrix,"  126,  139, 
140. 

Hogarth,   158. 

Homer,  220;  Chapman  on, 
255-261. 

"Honest  Whore,  The,"  Web- 
ster's part  in,  2 1 ;  Dekker's, 


296 


THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 


74,    75;    Middleton's    and 

Rowley's,  183. 
Hood,   138. 
Horace,    143. 
Home,   152. 
"How    to    Choose    a    Good 

Wife  from  a  Bad"    (Hey- 

wood),  247. 
Hugo,  Victor,  son  of,    4;  33, 

38;  Dekker  compared  with, 

74- 
Hunt,  Leigh,  on  Dekker,  78; 

on  Middleton,    154. 
"Hymns"  (Homer),  256. 

"  If  you  know  not  me,"  206. 

"IHad,"  Chapman's  transla- 
tion, 255. 

"Inner-Temple  Masque, 
The,"  179. 

"Insatiate  Countess,  The" 
(Marston),    135. 

"  Iron  Age,  The,"  216,  220. 

Italian  influence,  73,  103,119, 
148,  247. 

"Jack  Drum's  Entertain- 
ment,"  126,   142. 

Jeronimo,   167. 

"Jerusalem"  (Blake),  279. 

"Jests  to  make  you  merry" 
(Dekker),  99. 

' '  Jew  of  Malta ' '  (Marlowe) ,  5 ; 
compared  with  "  Dr.  Faus- 
tus,"  6;  with  "King  Rich- 
ard II.,"  II,  189. 

"  JocondoandAstolfo"  (Dek- 
ker), no. 

Johnson,  Dr.,  162,  237. 

Jones,  Inigo,  256. 

Jonson,  Ben,  compared  with 
Shakespeare,  65;  "Poetas- 
ter," 68  ;  compared  with 
Dekker,  69,  70,  in;  collab- 
oration with  Dekker,  71; 
court    characters,    85;    in- 


fluence on  Marston,  122  ; 
"Catiline,"  144;  character 
invention,  158;  compared 
with  Middleton,  165,  172; 
treatment  of  couplet,  205; 
model  for  other  poets  of 
the  age,  222,  237;  friend 
of  Chapman,  256;  model 
for  Heywood,  251;  Chap- 
man's feeling  toward,  260; 
ridicules  Marston,  276. 
Juvenal,    Tourneur  akin   to, 


Keats,  223;  on  Chapman, 
258. 

Killigrew,  267. 

King  Brute,  213. 

"King  Edward  III.,"  12. 

"King  Edward  IV.,"  203, 
230. 

"  King  Henry  VI.,"  Marlowe's 
part  in,  9. 

"  King  Henry  VIII.,"  Fletch- 
er's part  in,  174. 

King  James,  129;  demonol- 
ogy,  161,  213,  256. 

"King  Lear,"  16,  31,  176. 

"  King  Richard  II.,"  6,  208. 

Kingsley,  on  Webster,  42;  on 
Dekker,  89,  90. 

"  Knight's  Conjuring,  A,"  95. 

Knox,  John,  267. 

La  Fontaine,  no. 

Lamb,  Charles,  21,  151,  190; 
on  Dekker,  63,  66,  78, 
162;  on  Marston,  122,  123; 
on  Webster,  140;  on  Hey- 
wood, 152,  200,  202,  205, 
211,  214,  219,  225,  226, 
237;  on  Middleton,  153, 
165,  167,  177;  on  Rowley, 
187, 197-199,  202;  onChap- 
man,  258,  259;  on  Tour- 
neur, 284. 


INDEX 


297 


Landor,  Walter  Savage,  120, 
166;  onMarston,  137;  Row- 
ley compared  with,  199. 

"Lantern  and  Candle-light" 
(Dekker),   10 1. 

"La  Reine  d'Espagne,"  232. 

Latin  comedy,  133. 

Latter-day  Pamphlets,"  93. 

Latouche,  Henri  de,  232. 

"  Laugh  and  Lie  Down,"  278. 

Lee,  "Gloriana,"  82. 

"Life  of  Merlin,  surnamed 
Ambrosius"  (Hey  wood), 
1 12. 

Lillo,  239. 

"Lingua,"    170. 

Little  Dorr  it,  100. 

London,  11,  203,  214,  245. 

"London's  Tempe,"  84. 

Longfellow,  38. 

"Love's  Mistress,"   222. 

Lowndes,  278. 

"Loyal  Subject,  The" 
(Fletcher),  232. 

Lucrezia  Borgia,  209. 

"Lust's  Dominion,"  85,  152. 

"  Lycidas."    157. 

Lyly,  parody  on  "Antonio 
and  Mellida,"  147. 

Lyric  poetry  before  Shake- 
speare, 242. 

MACAULAY,on  Milton.   104. 
"  Macbeth,"  relation  to  "  The 

Witch,"   172,  252. 
Machiavelli,  84. 
"Mad    World,    My    Masters, 

A"   (Middleton),   160. 
"Maid's  Tragedy,  The,"  30. 
"Maidenhead  Well  Lost,  A," 

231- 

"Malcontent,  The"  (Mars- 
ton),  22,  116;  Webster's 
part  in,  124,  129. 

Mallory,  229. 

"Manfred,"  3, 


Mantalini,   24. 

Marlowe,  Christopher  (1-14), 
influence  on  Shelley,  i,  13; 
on  Milton,  5;  on  Nathaniel 
Lee,  7;  compared  with 
Shakespeare,  7,  194,  208; 
comic  spirit,  10,  11;  trans- 
lations of  Ovid  and  Lucan, 
12;  lyric  quality,  13;  place 
in  literature,  14;  compared 
with  Webster,  33,  58,  59; 
impostures  of,  85;  Bullen's 
edition,  151;  Middleton 
compared  with,  172;  model 
for  others,  178;  first  great 
poet  of  England,  189;  treat- 
ment of  couplet,  205,  260. 

Marmion,  222. 

Marston,  John,  (11 2-149), 
tragic  spirit  compared  with 
Webster's,  17,  30,  59;  col- 
laboration with  Webster, 
22;  relations  with  Jonson, 
112,  113,  127;  tragic  style 
compared  with  Webster, 
Tourneur,  Shakespeare, 
114;  characters,  115,  116; 
compared  with  Sophocles, 
Tacitus,  Dante,  117,  119; 
influenced  by  Jonson,  122, 
collaboration  with,  140, 
141;  place  among  poets, 
144;  compared  with  Jon- 
son, 146;  satirist,  179; 
compared  with  Tourneur, 
276,  277,  281;  ridiculed  by 
Jonson,  276. 

Mary  Tudor,   207. 

' '  Massacre  at  Paris ' '  (Mar- 
lowe), 7,   10. 

Massinger,    30,    87,    90,    194, 

237- 
"Match     at     Midnight,     A 

(Rowley),    192. 
"Match     Me     in     London" 
(Dekker),  84, 


THE   AGE   OF    SHAKESPEARE 


"Mayor  of  Queenborough, 
The,"    167. 

"  Medea,"  the,  37. 

Meltun  Society,  157  note. 

"  Menaechmi,  The,"  217. 

"Michaelmas  Term"  (Mid- 
dleton),   158. 

"  Microcynicon,"    179. 

Middleton,  Thomas  (150- 
187),  place  as  tragic  poet, 
30;  associated  with  Dekker, 
75-77,  87;  poet  of  city,  85; 
comic  style,  158;  associated 
with  Rowley  and  Dekker, 
161;  "The  Widow,"  165; 
allegory  compared  with 
Dekker's,  168;  obligations 
to  Shakespeare.  172;  com- 
pared with  Chaucer,  1 7  7 ;  a 
second  poet  by  same  name 
( ?),  180;  collaboration  with 
Rowley,  182;  comedy,  190; 
cj.  "  Meddletun,"  237. 

"Midsummer  Night's 
Dream,"  compared  with 
"Old  Fortunatus,"  65. 

Millais,  203. 

Milton,  indebted  to  Marlowe. 
5.  38.  5°-  95  150;  indebted 
to  Middleton,  157,  170.  236. 
199;  indebted  to  Hey  wood, 
217. 

Minto.  on  Chapman.  260. 

"Miseries  of  Enforced  Mar- 
riage, The,"   246 

"Misery  of  a  Prison  and  a 
Prisoner. The"(Dekker)  .99. 

Molicre,  Dekker  compared 
with,  107:  Marston,  132. 
133.  211;  Haywood.  211. 
216.  222. 

"Monsieur  d'Olive"  (Chap- 
man), 259. 

Morality  plays.    156. 

"More  Dissemblers  Besides 
Women"  (Middleton).  164. 


Morris,  William,  215,  223. 
"Mountebank's     Masque," 

138. 
Musceus,  256. 
"Myrrha"  (Barkstead),  136. 

Nash,Thomas,8,  100,180,188 
National    characteristics    on 

Hey-wood,  Sidney, etc.,  254. 
Nelson,   254. 
Newman,  J.  H.,  89,  90. 
"  News  from  Hell,"  95. 
"New     Wonder,     A,     etc." 

(Rowley),   191. 
"Northward  Ho!",  20. 
"No    Wit,    No    Help    Like 

a  Woman's"   (Middleton), 

165. 

"Odyssey,"     Chapman's 

translation,  256. 
"  Old  Fortunatus  "  (Webster) , 

21,     30;     "Midsummer 

Night's  Dream"  compared 

with,  65. 
"Old  Law,  The"    (Rowley), 

167. 
Old  Plays,  Dilke's.   154,   195. 
One-part  plays,    237. 
"Othello,"    16,  31. 
Ovid,  Marlowe's  translations, 

12;    source    for  Hey  wood, 

218;  Dryden's  translations, 

22  r. 
Oxford,   255. 

Painter,  William,  58. 

"Palace  of  Pleasure,  The" 
(Painter).   58. 

"Paradise  Regained,"  157. 

"  Parasi taster,  The"  (Mars- 
ton),   133,   146. 

"Parliament  of  Bees,  The," 

85- 
"Passionate  Shepherd,  The" 
(Marlowe),   13. 


INDEX 


299 


"Patient  Grissel,"  72. 

Patient  Grizel,  type  of  hero- 
ine,  247. 

Patriotism  in  Dante,  Cole- 
ridge, Shakespeare,  Virgil, 
202;  in  Heywood,  243,  245. 

Peele,  George,  69,  205. 

Percy  Society,.  188. 

"  Persce,"  the,  81. 

Persius,  Tourneur  akin  to, 
281. 

"Phoenix  and  Turtle.  The," 
138,   156. 

Pickwick  Papers,  100. 

Plautus,  imitated  by  Dryden, 
Moliere,  Rotrou,  216;  mod- 
el for  Heywood,  231,  240. 

Plymouth,   243. 

"Poetaster,  The"  (Jonson), 
68,   133,   138. 

Ponsard,  38. 

Pope,  82,  228. 

"Prince  Nicander's  vein," 

Protestant  animosity  in  dra- 
ma, 207. 

Prynne,  William,  207. 

Psyche,  subject  of  English 
poetry,   222,   223,   251. 

"Puritan,  The,"   181. 

Puritanism,  241,  278,  2S1, 
286  note. 

"Pygmalion's  Image,"  136. 

Queen  Elizabeth,  69,   105, 

168,  211-213,  256. 
"Queen    of    Corinth,    The," 

178. 
Quevedo,  95. 

Rabelais,  95;  Rowley  com- 
pared with,  190. 

Raleigh,   Sir  Walter,   69. 

Rand,  verb,    189. 

"  Rape  of  Lucrece,  The," 
223. 


"Raven's  Almanack,  The" 
(Dekker),    103. 

Realism,  in  dialogue,  194; 
of  Heywood  and  Fletcher, 
214,  247;  differentiated 
from  romanticism,  234. 

"Rehearsal,  The,"  226. 

Renascence,   281. 

Restoration,  the,  157  note, 
259,  278. 

"Return  from  Parnassus, 
The,"    141. 

"Revenger's  Tragedy,  The" 
(Tourneur),  176,  268,  273, 
287. _ 

"Roaring  Girl,  The,"  161. 

"Robert,  Earl  of  Hunting- 
ton,"  73. 

Rochester,  Lord,  157. 

"Rod  for  Runaways,  A" 
(Dekker),   103. 

"  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  69, 
179,   247. 

Rotrou,   216. 

Rowley,  William  (187-199), 
genius  in  comedy  and 
tragedy,  24,  166-168;  col- 
laboration with  Middleton, 
161,  179,  181-183;  com- 
pared with  Dekker  and 
Nash,  188;  akin  to  Rabe- 
lais, 190;  comic  style  com- 
pared with  Dekker,  Mid- 
dleton, Heywood,  191; 
theory  of  verse,  194;  best 
as  tragic  poet,  196,  197; 
compared  with  He5rwood, 
244. 

"  Royal  King  and  Loyal  Sub- 
ject, The,"  193,  232. 

St.  George's  Day,  190. 
"St.      Patrick     for  Ireland" 

(Shirley),   194. 
"Samson  Agonistes,"i  57. 
Sancho  Panza,  229. 


^oo 


THE    AGE   OF    SHAKESPEARE 


"  Sardanapalus,"  267 

"  Satiromastix  "  (Dekker),  69, 
127.   128. 

Scott.  Sir  Walter,  84;  on  Mid- 
dleton,  153. 

"Seaman.  The,"  96. 

"Search  for  Money,  A."  188. 

"Second  Maiden's  Tragedy, 
The."   174. 

"Sejanus,"     144. 

Selden,  163. 

Settle,  Elkanah,  157  note. 

"Seven  Deadly  Sins  of  Lon- 
don. The,"  93. 

Shadwell,  251,  267. 

Shakespeare,  Marlowe  com- 
pared with,  2.  10,  14; 
translated  by  Hugo,  4; 
indebted  to  Marlowe,  5, 
14,  36;  Webster  compared 
with,  15-17.  29,  30,  S3'  38. 
44-46,  52.  54,  57,  58; 
collaboration  with  Row- 
ley, 24;  doctrine  compared 
with  ^schylus,  31;  lyric 
quality,  50;  greatest  con- 
temporary of,  55;  light 
comedy,  64;  Webster  on, 
65;  Dekker  compared  with, 
67,  71,  in  humor,  108;  bur- 
lesqued by  Dekker,  68,  81; 
admonitory  style  in  dia- 
logue, 98 ;  "  Venus  and 
Adonis,"  136;  obscurity  like 
Marston's,  137,  144;  above 
Milton,  Coleridge,  and 
Shelley,  150;  Middleton 
compared  with,  154,  155, 
in  humor,  158;  characters, 
166,  182,  184;  obligations 
to  Middleton,  172;  tragic 
invention,  176;  method  of 
work,  178;  compared  with 
Rowley,  verse  quality,  191, 
194;  patriotism,  202;  treat- 
ment of  couplet,   205;   on 


chronicle  plays,  206,  209; 
"Richard  II.,"  208;  Hey- 
wood  compared  with, 
blank  verse,  224;  national 
qualities  in,  236;  Dr.  John- 
son on,  237;  humanity, 
243;  use  of  foreign  words, 
246;  quoted  in  Heywood's 
plays,  249;  reference  to 
Chapman,  260;  Tourneur 
compared  with,  in  dramat- 
ic dialogue,  263;  verse  mu- 
sic, 270;  tragic  hero,  274; 
poetic  style,  276. 

Shakespeare  Society,  19. 

Shelley.  Marlowe's  influence 
on,  1,16,  38;  Dekker  com- 
pared with,  72;  Marston, 
137,  141,  177,  258. 

Shirley,  30,  38,  163,  194,  221. 

"Shadow  of  Night,  The" 
(Chapman),  255. 

"Shoemaker,  a  Gentleman, 
A"    (Rowley),    193. 

Sidney.  Sir  Philip,  i8,  66,  68, 
224,  254,  258. 

Sigurd,  214. 

"Silver  Age,  The,"  216. 

"Sir  Giles  Goosecap,"  128. 

"Sir  Peter  Harpdon's  End," 

215- 
"Sir  Thomas  More,"  19. 
"Sir    Thomas    Wyatt,    The 

Famous  History  of ,"  19,22. 
"  Sir  Tristrem,"  153. 
Slang,  Rowley's,  195. 
Socrates,   169. 
Somerset,  Earl  of,  256. 
Sophocles,  Webster  compared 

with,  35-37,  52,  218,  221. 
"  Sophonisba" (Marston), II 6. 
Southey,  on  Rowley,  199. 
Sovereign  of  modern   poets, 

35- 
Spain   in   drama,    168,    194, 
210,  234. 


INDEX 


301 


"Spanish  Gipsy,  The,"    177, 

"Spanish  Moor's  Tragedy, 
The,"  85. 

Spenser,   i. 

Stanihurst's  Virgil,  280. 

Sterne,  Dekker's  style  com- 
pared to,  107;  morbidity, 
121. 

"Strange  Horse-race,  A" 
(Dekker),   102. 

Strozzi,  Ercole,  209. 

Study  of  Shakespeare,  A,  11. 

Suckhng,   Sir  John,    157. 

Sue,  Eugene,  33. 

Swift,  Jonathan,  prose,  8,  17, 
121,  220;  Tourneur  com- 
pared to,  264. 

Tacitus,  Marston's  dialogue 
compared  with,  119. 

"  Tamburlaine,"    2,   4,    11. 

"Taming  of  the  Shrew,  The," 
Marlowe's  part  in,  ir. 

Tennyson,  Webster's  verse 
compared  with,  20,  38, 
208;  Hey  wood  compared 
with,  236,  278. 

Thackeray,  Dekker's  humor 
compared  with,  106,  108. 

Thames,  the,   190. 

Theocritus,  imitated  by  Hey- 
wood,  214. 

"Thomas  of  Reading,  etc.," 
91. 

"Three  Hours  After  Mar- 
riage," 82. 

"Titus  Andronicus,"    12. 

Tourneur,  Cyril  (262-289), 
cynicism  compared  with 
Webster,  17,  60;  verse 
compared  with  Middleton, 
172,  176;  poetic  passion, 
182;  allegory,  180;  reflec- 
tive quality,  263;  dialogue 
compared      with      Shake- 


speare, Webster,  263 ;  shows 
influence  of  age,  268;  verse 
quahty,  269,  270;  dramat- 
ic quality,  271,  272;  re- 
venge as  theme,  273;  mas- 
ter-work, 273;  comparable 
only  with  Shakespeare, 
276,  277,  280,  281,  282, 
288;  sublimity,  280;  akin 
to  Juvenal,  Persius,  281; 
tragic  style,  285;  moral  pas- 
sion, 289. 
"Transformed  Metamorpho- 
sis, The"  (Tourneur),  180, 

^  279- 

Travel,  motive  for  drama, 
242. 

"Travels  of  Three  English 
Brothers,  The."  242. 

"Trial  of  Chivalry,  The" 
(Heywood),  228,  229,  235. 

"Traitor,  The,"  30. 

"Trick  to  Catch  the  Old  One, 
A"  (Middleton),  158,  160. 

"Troilus  and  Cressida,"  220, 
223,  277. 

"Troja  Britannica"  (Hey- 
wood), 212. 

Troy  "Histories"  of,  213. 

Tupper,  Martin,  228. 

Turner,  285. 

Twain,  Mark,  228. 

"Two  Foscari,  The,"  267. 

"Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona," 

155- 
"Two  Noble  Kinsmen,  The," 

Shakespeare's  part  in,  20. 
"Tyrannic  Love,"  226. 

Vanini,  Tourneur  successor 
of,  266. 

Vere,  Sir  Francis,  Tourneur's 
elegy  on,   277. 

"Venus  and  Adonis,"  238. 

Villon,  Francois,  Dekker  com- 
pared with,  61. 


302 


THE    AGE    OF    SHAKESPEARE 


Vindice,   60. 

Virgil,     source     for     "Dido, 

Queen    of    Carthage,"     8; 

love  of  country,  202. 
"Virgin  Martyr,  The"  (Dek- 

ker),  88,  194. 
"  Volpone,"  144. 
Voltaire,   199. 

Watson,   141. 

Webster,  John  (15-67),  tragic 
imagination  compared  with 
Shakespeare,  15,  29,  30, 
58,  59,  176.  190;  collabora- 
tion with  Dekker,  19;  with 
Rowley,  23,  24;  indepen- 
dent of  other  poets,  32; 
tragic  quality,  46;  lyric 
quality,  51;  metrical  faults, 
53,  54;  compared  with  Mar- 
lowe, 58;  with  Mars  ton, 
59;  with  Middleton,  172, 
182;  foreign  words,  246; 
compared  with  Tourneur, 
dialogue,  263;  verse,  270; 
style,  276,  280;  tragic 
heroes,    281. 

"Westward  Ho!",  20. 

"  What  you  Will"  (Marston), 
127,   128,    146. 

"White  Devil,  The"  (Web- 
ster), 16,  32,  37,  40,  270. 

"Whore  of  Babylon,  The," 
168. 

"Widow,  The"  (Middleton), 
164. 

"Widow's  Tears,  The" 
(Chapman),  259. 

Wilkins,  George,  244. 


"William  Eps  his  death" 
(Dekker),  95. 

"  Wisdom  of  Solomon,  The," 
180. 

"  Wise  Woman  of  Hogsdon, 
The"    (Heywood),   245. 

"Witch,  The"  (Middleton), 
relation  to  Macbeth,  171, 
172. 

Witchcraft,    251. 

"Witches  of  Lancashire, 
The,"    250,   251. 

Wither,    50. 

"  Woman  Killed  with  Kind- 
ness, A"  (Heywood),  212, 
238,    240,   249. 

"  Women  Beware  Women" 
(Middleton),  175,  177. 

"  Wonder  of  a  Kingdom, 
The"  (Dekker),  84. 

"Wonder  of  Women,  The" 
(Marston),    116,    122. 

"  Wonderful  Year,  The,"  93. 

Wood,  Anthony,  on  Chap- 
man,   255. 

Wordsworth,  love  of  coun- 
try, 202;  Heywood  com- 
pared with,   236. 

"  Work  for  Armourers" 
(Dekker),    102. 

"  Works  and  Days,"  Chap- 
man's translation,   256. 

"  World  Tost  at  Tennis,  The." 
179. 

"Your  Five  Gallants" 
(Middleton),    160. 

Zola,  Emile,  33. 


THE    END 


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